Another way of looking at the situation is - the UK Science Minister is hired to fill a spot, and make science seem, "serious," and have "authority," so that the general public feels that their tax dollars are going to something worthwhile. That would actually mean that in a sense, democracy is prevailing, because the majority of society would rather abstract away the details of science, they just see it as some authority which brings, "good things." I'm not talking about people on the internet who vote on social media, I'm talking about everyone--including that grandma in Scotland who is not on the internet at all.
For those who are strictly practicing empirical data collection, who dare I say, are better pure scientists within the online data collection domain, they may say, "this result had the most votes, so therefore this is the name which wins." But if you're the UK Science Minister, you likely are afraid of losing your job, and afraid of a blowback, knowing that a lot of people will reject that name and have never heard of this voting system. He/she likely is aware of the plushy toy opportunity, but has evaluated that and it pales in comparison to how much money the British Government could continue to get from taxpayers. In effect what you are saying is that you could do a better job than him in evaluating where money comes from for these types of endeavors.
According to your logic we should all feel cynical and contemptuous that Mountain Dew is not now named, "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong."