I agree that a "voting" mechanism sounds all wrong, not only for the reason you said.
In the scenario described, where we have some neurons coming ultimately from the hand and sense of touch, and others coming ultimately from the eye and sense of vision, and they disagree about what they're perceiving, they're not voting! First of all, it might be better described as a "negotiation", and in fairness I think their theory does envisage this (but they do use the term "vote", albeit in scare quotes).
Second, what this theory misses (as does a lot of recent work which takes neural networks as a jumping-off point) is the transition from sensory/sub-cognitive processing up to conscious/cognitive processing. If my hand feels a cat and my eye sees a coffee cup, then I'll consciously notice the contradiction and gather more evidence.
In the scenario described, where we have some neurons coming ultimately from the hand and sense of touch, and others coming ultimately from the eye and sense of vision, and they disagree about what they're perceiving, they're not voting! First of all, it might be better described as a "negotiation", and in fairness I think their theory does envisage this (but they do use the term "vote", albeit in scare quotes).
Second, what this theory misses (as does a lot of recent work which takes neural networks as a jumping-off point) is the transition from sensory/sub-cognitive processing up to conscious/cognitive processing. If my hand feels a cat and my eye sees a coffee cup, then I'll consciously notice the contradiction and gather more evidence.