Hasbro was apparently very upset about that vote.
I was at that year's Hall of Fame ceremony. They were indeed not very thrilled about it.
They made a nominee video for him because they had to, but it was very jokey and completely unlike all the other nominee videos, basically a mockumentary featuring fake interviews with various designers and creators going over a false real-world history for the character, about how he "almost" got featured in several post-G1 toylines and cartoons before not making the final cut for any of them (like saying his role in Beast Wars was replaced by Rattrap at the last minute, because yeah that totally happened).
But after the video, someone (I forget if was Aaron Archer or Rik Alvarez or somebody else from Hasbro even higher up than either of them) came out on stage and said something to the effect of "You know, we take these events very seriously and do not appreciate the polls being rigged with joke votes like this. You've had your fun, and we've indulged you this one time, but please do not do this again."
But IIRC that first movie line repaint of Cybertron Mudflap was supposed to be Erector but when they couldn't get the name they changed the deco to make him someone else, which pretty much just meant making the red face white.
Not quite. That figure was originally gonna use the final deco for the unreleased Cybertron Landslide figure, but with the name "Sawtooth" instead.
But the name "Sawtooth" was unavailable at the time (it would only ever be used for a Transformers toy eight years later in 2016 as a RID15 Mini-Con), and Landslide's colors weren't deemed realistic enough for the 2007 Movie toyline. So, the "Mudflap" name was retained, and the deco was changed to resemble that of Erector, whose colors were realistic enough to resemble real-world construction vehicles.