Unless I'm missing something, these are all of the slogan-shirts that won:
http://www.threadless.com/catalog/line,typetees

You'd notice that the top row is nearly 300 days old (going by blog posts about the shirts), and the rest are 600-700 days old. Do they only select winners once a year or something?

I thought one up that has a 41% approval rate, that's higher then the president, come on! :P

But seriously folks, is there some automatic threshold that needs to be passed before the staff even see it? It's pretty much impossible (not to mention futile and mind-numbing) for them to review ALL of the submitted slogans.

From looking at past winners it seems passing 50% triggers some sort of magical, wonder-us something... that puts it on their radars. But it doesn't really decide anything, I saw a 71% slogan that had more votes then a %50-something one.. from the same user. And the 50%-something one won.

The point is getting on their radar I suppose. What's also strange is that some slogans just take off and have hundreds of votes (good or bad) while others just have a few dozen. A 50% slogan with say, 60 votes, is dead-in-the-water.

But how/why do only some ramp up on the number of voters so much?

So this is the " Thriftee".
And apparently, I should "hurry up and finish checking out before someone else buys it".

Which is swell. But, err, it is marked at $5. (Look at the pretty icon)

But in the cart, it is actually $10. (And no, I don't have the quantity set to 2, just 1, thankyaverymuchly)

Very few of the designs get a long sleeve version, and that's ok.
But at least stock more long sleeve units per design then! Compensate.

Look at this, almost all of the long sleeves are totally sold out. MADNESS.