Inside baseball story is that originally we were going to require you to forfeit your vote to participate (and then allow players to strategize together on who goes for it). That's why that artifact mentioning forfeiting a vote was still briefly on the form for a couple of players to see.
I really do like that idea. The fewer players that go for it, the more enticing it is to try, because your odds of grabbing the idol go up. But the more players who go for it, not only the lower your idol odds, but the more volatile Tribal Council gets as well. Imagine just 3 players having votes, that's scary, and they'd be so powerful! But it would be the other players who gave up their votes willingly and let it happen.
I ended up going away from that only because, as fun as it is in theory, it can get so wacky and especially wouldn't sit right as the first vote of the merge imo. Since only 7/12 went for it even for free, I wonder how many would have gone for it if we left it as it was. But I think it was the right call to scale back and take out that idea.