My friend is running a game of this, and we're looking at about 6 players + himself in total. It's unlikely we'll be able to get everyone present for the first session, so what happens to the poor souls who turn up the week after? Do you just get everyone to vote yay or nay to the stats he's allocated?

Also, if I'm understanding it correctly...6 players with 6 stats each, and you vote on each of the three categories, so that's 18 "voting sessions" in total. Seems like a bit of a timesink, if you include the ensuing arguments over what stats everyone thinks they deserve...

I've found that the character creation is simple enough that if one player misses creating their character, they should be able to whip up their stats pretty fast.

Yes, the voting process can seem a bit tedious (especially when playing with six), but you can shorten the process. When I played earlier this year, we did not vote on each stat, but each skill category, cutting the voting in half.

Actually, that's what the book says you're supposed to do

Each character gets voted on 3 times - if you get more positives than negatives, you raise one of the two stats in that category, and the opposite if you get more negatives than positives.