Me, probably like many others, had no idea of the short vote until today. (Look at the 22% turnout and yet the vote affected all Swarm holders.)
Now I am aware that votes can take place, but on such short notice, it is not exactly fair. (Reminds me a bit of how congress passed certain legislation by having votes when certain opponents were unavailable.) I'm not saying their were bad intentions, but we need more of a heads up in the future.
Unfortunately with these technologies it's not super easy to notify people. We sent out an email newsletter, blog post, announcement on Bitcointalk, token issuance to all SWARMPRE holders that had a link to the blogpost, and active discussion in our Skype group (which now has 100+ people).
For any future votes we will announce them well in advance through the same channels. In this case due to the nature of our fundraiser we had a very short turn around time. That said, I'm not super disappointed at the turnout since it A) involved the most engaged participants B) is the first time anything like this has been done.
It would be nice to see some discussion (a thread) on the benefits of either position to holders of Swarm BEFORE the vote.
You mean a separate thread on bitcointalk or something else? There was a lot of discussion here and I believe I at least attempted to answer every question that was asked.