A totally anonymous vote is not possible, because at some point they must reveal the aggregate result, and this will allow the voters to reason about the way others must have voted. The minimum number of voters who must have taken a position is known. If the total pool of voters is small, they can talk among themselves, and this will reveal either impassioned people being publicly outspoken about their position, or people being deferential about their position. Irrespective of whether anyone is lying about how they voted, the deferential people will be under suspicion of having voted the way they're less likely to admit in public. This incentivizes people to seem more publicly impassioned about the position that's least likely to result in their condemnation.

People with unimpeachable credentials are still human beings with flaws like all of us.

This is about the removal of a listing, i.e. it is all about considerations regarding the public image and does not have anything to do with the project's current day-to-day work. Is this true or not?

It also coincides with a campaign against Richard Stallman which is built around an open letter. It turns out that that letter contains several blatant lies and there is no way around the fact. Every single person or organization that signed that letter is (unintentionally or not) supporting these lies because, well, they put their signature on them. I am finding this really hard to swallow.

Sane discussion within the community to get some things straight is probably too time-consuming and fussy, so it was probably easier to just remove a listing and throw some generic reassuring copypasta at the end.