For the time window allocated - which is 24 hours now, subject to change to 7 days in HF 17 - the stakeholders are voting and when the time window expires, whatever has left in the post "account" is transferred to the author account. That's how things are working right now, according to the code I read on github. If there's something I missed, please let me know.

You seem to be missing, despite clearly being aware of, the facility written into the system which allows any stakeholder to apply negative r-shares to a payout proposal.

The contract is between the payout recipient and the stakeholders. Some stakeholders apply positive r-shares to the payout. Others apply negative r-shares to the payout. The result depends upon the culmative amount, not just the positive. This is the contract which allows all stakeholders to have their say, if they so choose.

The reward pool is neutral, or agnostic. Theoretically, if nobody votes, the reward pool vanishes at the end of the day, it doesn't redistribute equally to all the stakeholders (which would be also bad).

I don't believe this is true. As far as my understanding goes, the reward pool continues to exist indefinitely and will be allocated when a payout happens, as long as that takes.