Sometime in the past, the 002 objects were a megastructure surrounding earth for… reasons, and then we blew them up and blasted them to the Oort cloud. The O5's maybe already had an idea of what was going on with that, leading to the initial -EX rating. The more that was revealed, the more familiar it sounded/matched their theory, so eventually they're all like, "Yeah, that's what that is."
This caused me some confusion: Most of the time you see so much O5 interference and Big Serious Votes in an article, it's because they're trying to bury something, and is a tension-building device. With that my mind initially goes to "Oh, there's some nefarious or symbolic reason for keeping this -EX, and neither of those really made sense.
If my theory above is correct, aka O5s going "ohhhh, that's what that is", then never showing us what the O5's know, just showing the votes, is kind of hurting this for the reasons stated above. I think the story we do get to read could use a few more clues to tip your hand about the O5's figuring it out (like, if I was supposed to gather anything from you saying the words "religious imagery", I didn't), or honestly just a few more clues in general. I think your use of the O5 votes and -EX class was a creative (if a little confusing),narrative device, but the told-and-implied story is a little too vague to really grab me.
I guess no vote, on that basis.
I also really enjoyed the worldbuilding, especially the Foundation saying "oh, it's not all these spacefaring species we're aware of.
