Okay! They are welcome to have some volunteers accompany the poll workers to this effect.

Great!

Then when the poll workers go back to Desnau they can go with some people executed for spreading revolutionary propaganda, who do not, in fact, intend to let that stop them.

Cool. The poll workers are mostly not offensive powerhouses but they are capable of protecting their revolutionary propagandists.

The vast majority of villages don't have garrisons in them!

Some of the places that do have garrisons in them will get people trying to shoot Vanda Nosseo workers, or in one case trying to disintegrate them with a hero crest then repeatedly crush them with a blunt object when that doesn't work.

They have all had Being Indestructible Training; the one who is being repeatedly attacked with a blunt object will sit there making irritated faces while co-workers try to prevent the situation from escalating.

It is rather hard for the situation to escalate beyond "gunfire," honestly? 

Well, it could escalate to pointing guns at people who will be more inconvenienced than that.

They're firing guns at seditionists and revolutionaries! They are not firing guns at people who are neither seditionists nor revolutionaries!

... Okay, some of the Ace's own troops are trying to run away now and he's ordering them to stop and his loyalists are pointing guns at them.

...the seditionists and revolutionaries can helpfully inform the attempted deserters that they have no plans to harm them and are here in a purely defensive capacity?

Then the attempted deserters will be arrested for cowardice and Desnau will fail to suppress Vanda Nosseo's explanations.

Elsewhere: They seem to be running into an odd phenomenon in several of the villages, including many on the far side of what had been the Desnau border five years ago! Specifically, troops of soldiers stationed in the villages who, if they cannot get the locals not to vote, intend to vote as residents themselves.

Do they outnumber the locals?

Yup! By about ten percent, in most cases.

Hm. Do they live in exactly the same place or do they have their own camp or barracks situation?

They're currently pitching their tents among and surrounding the villages.

Are there any ambiguities about which people are villagers and which people are soldiers?

None whatsoever.

Oh good, as long as they don't have cases of soldiers who in the time they've been stationed there married a local and have a child or something then they can just count them as separate populations. They can vote on whether their units want to be part of Vanda Nossëo but this will not be binding on the villagers.

No, these soldiers seem to have arrived within the past few weeks, if not within the past few days.

If their decisions won't be binding, then no, they don't want to join Vanda Nosseo. They have orders.

Okay! They can cast ballots anyway if they want. (P.S. Desertion is not a crime in Vanda Nossëo and they can teleport. Just sayin'.)

They do not actually get the opportunity to fill out ballots unobserved by their officers and underofficers!

Then they can't cast ballots, it's very important that the ballots be secret. But if they want to non-ballotwise be teleported out to join as individuals they can also do that. Look at these pretty pictures of homestead planets.

Some of them will desert.

... OK, once it's clear that this is safe, a surprising number of them will desert.

Amazing. Who could possibly have predicted this. Anyway, time for the villagers to vote!

Vote vote vote!