You're right.
I personally hate the things. They are always about who gets the most mates to vote. Which to me seems pointless. If you win, you know that you won not because your baby WAS the cutest, but because you rallied enough friends to make sure they won.
So you can't say "my baby won a beautiful baby competition" you can only say "I have got loads of friends"
Any 'victory' is worthless.
But to those people, it doesn't matter that they haven't actually won anything worth a damn. They technically won and they can say they won.
Personally, I think there's nothing to be proud or pleased about in that at all. winning for winning's sake. I mean, do they look at their baby and think that their baby won? It's all about Show.
But that's their choice. If they want to carry on like that, let them. Don't try to save them from themselves. 
that's not up to any of us.
- oh, and in my young and stupid new parent days I was approached in the shopping centre and asked if I wanted to enter my baby in a comp. run by local paper. advertised in paper and telephone votes. I said yes
and he was photographed.
You could keep track of the votes 
and I watched 2 normal looking plain and ordinary babies keep overtaking each other. I realised what they were doing and kept checking. and every time, the one had overtaken the other. Silly people.
and my lad got second place in the end anyway! without my asking anyone to vote! So as far as I'm concerned. He won.
And I can't believe I confessed that I used to be the sort of person who would parade her baby