My two metals on the matter:
Don't get rid of unique customs. They add some much needed punch to the standard maps. Weather and layout variants of standard maps can go, though, for previously stated reasons.
To be blunt, if voting is to remain as is, even with the "recently played" extensions mentioned, then people need to just suck it up and stop what they are doing to vote for the map they desire. Yes, it interrupts combat, but that's the price you pay if you want the voting. If there was a way to make it more seamless at this point, don't you think someone would have thought of it? Hell, Powerlord adapting the votes to the F-keys was a godsend for a while. For the love of Gabe, stop hitting F1 to remove the prompt and pay attention. Or stop complaining.
And if returning to a mapcycle-only setup, then someone needs to be a dictator and lay down the cycle themselves, balancing it out as much as possible with most played, least played, and custom maps. Voting for the cycle order will only result in the same imbalances as with regular voting. If keeping RTV, then if possible, create a limit of one or two RTVs (and never consecutive) per every five maps to prevent the revolving mapset scenario that people are worried about. If you want variety and voting isn't in effect, you're going to have to deal with the fact that you won't get the map you want all the time. Variety doesn't mean "delete arena/badwater/harvest forever". It shouldn't need saying but well whatever.
Anyway, I probably shouldn't have written this at my current level of fatigue but ehhhhhhhhhh. :zzz: