Did the Summerdale players even get a link to the referendum? My understanding was it was a Libero Empire referendum that failed to end when the region was TO'd. It doesn't take a player of 4 years to work out that a vote from the OLD realm shouldn't determine the Lord of a captured region.
If that was the case what exactly could the players of Summerdale do to prevent this outcome?
Other than not drop 3.5k cs of troops into a region which they just took over and which had a lord of unknown trustworthiness? Nothing.