i read around that googles consider votes of social bookmarking sites as votes. That sounds good, but is it true? or just a hunch?
google will not care social bookmarking links. most of the social bookmarking sites are using nofollow on their links. because of this google will ignore all of the backlinks on the social bookmarking sites
a vote is a backlink. whenever a site links back to you, google considers that as a vote. more vote you have, better placement on SE you get. like the election, whoever gets most vote wins. in terms of getting vote from SB sites, most of major SB sites are now using nofollow so they will not count towards backlinks. but SB sites that are not sing nofollow will give you backlinks/votes. just as same as any other sites
if you have 1 vote or 1 million votes on the same website, you always get one link. If you have one million votes, you'll be on the first pages, so many visits and high pr, but no more than one linke