Even though I’m not a big fan of online contests in general, I am always happy to vote for the children, pets and creations of my actual friends and family members if you ask via email, even mass email. I’ll even post your request to one of my blogs and/or social networks if appropriate.
Same goes for friendly acquaintances and their voting requests. And I might even vote at your request if I don’t know you, but you post it to a forum, mailing list or social network where we share a common interest or mutual friends. Or if your Tweet is cute and clever enough.
That is, if you post a polite request or two or maybe even three. NOT if you post every freaking day with multiple thread bumps, or if you email me and I have no clue who you are. If you do that, I will go out of my way not only to NOT vote for your child/pet/artwork/photo, I will vote for one of your competitors. If multiple votes from the same IP address are permitted, every single computer in my house and in my unfortunately rather small office will vote against you (that is still a total of approximately 25 computers).
That is all.