Public voting for 2010 poster opens

Public voting for 2010 poster opens, via BizCommunity:

South African residents are being invited to make their voices heard from today by voting for one of three designs to become the official poster of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It is the second time since the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany (see those poster designs) that the residents of the host country are actively involved in the selection of the official event poster.

From a total of 16 creative entries, all submitted solely by South-African [sic] based agencies, three proposals have been pre-selected by a jury.

Go choose your favourite, and stand the chance to win two FIFA World Cup tickets provided by MTN! The deadline for voting is midnight on 30 September 2007. You can also vote via SMS or phone.

Unfortunately it seems as though FIFA need to work on their geolocation sniffing because on attempting to vote, I was presented with the following error message:

We are sorry to inform you that you cannot take part in the voting because either your point of access does not appear to be in South Africa or you do not reside in the country.

They'd better correct this ASAP otherwise the exercise will be a huge failure.

Also it's a pity the posters can't be viewed at a larger resolution, and why only 3 final designs? And why only 16 entries? Was this an invitation-only competition? I suspect details of the process will be revealed later and I'll be interested to hear how this was handled, because I can imagine a number of designers and agencies calling "foul" again.

I like them all for different reasons, but prefer the middle one, because it has more impact and I love the face/continent combination - although the plain yellow background is a little boring and feels incomplete. The first one doesn't say much to me and doesn't have much of an African feel (it might be losing detail at that resolution?), while the last one is well executed and clever, but perhaps overly so. There's something about it that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Judging by the similarity in colour, I suspect they were all subject to strict FIFA guidelines, as with the official logo.

Which is your favourite?

UPDATE [12/09]: The voting page has been updated with the following:

Please be aware that you have to perform the following steps to submit your vote on FIFA.com:

1. You need to access FIFA.com from South Africa (reflected by your IP Address).
2. You need to create a FIFA.com Club Member Account (registration is quick, easy and free).
3. You have to be a resident of South Africa (reflected by the choice of country in your FIFA.com Club profile).

I doubt this will encourage many to vote... how disappointing!