Demystifying the tenure/promotion vote -- share your experiences here!

So both in my own department, via colleagues at other universities, and many posts in this subreddit, I see a lot of misunderstanding about the "dreaded" tenure vote -- this is typically when a department votes on a tenure package (often with the external letters in hand), which is almost always a recommendation to e.g. the chair or Dean, and never a final decision. I'd like to share my experiences sitting on the other side of the table (R1, STEM department, now Full Professor, with maybe 10 votes under my belt) -- and would ask others to share their own experiences (or pre-tenure folks to ask questions here). ITT focus on the departmental vote, not other levels of the university. As a note, I'm trying to see if my department will start allowing all faculty (regardless of whether they are allowed to vote or not) to sit in on these discussions, because after the first time I did it (post-tenure, of course) I could have slapped myself with how dumb certain conversations/theories/worries were during the lead-up to tenure. The process was entirely predictable and, frankly, without nuance and fairly applied. Even with those asshole professors you worry about.

To kick it off, here's my experience: tenure votes are quick and boring (mostly) with a lot of herding (people vote yes so they don't look bad in front of other faculty). We sit down with your package, essentially count your pubs and screen through your grants looking for one that is competitive, and barely glance at your teaching and more or less ignore your service. Most tenure discussions I've participated in are under 30 minutes, and the default (in the room) is to vote to tenure -- we have to go searching for reasons NOT to grant tenure, and many of those reasons get quickly shot down or ignored. I will note we've had some EXTREMELY edge cases, but they still all resulted in the person getting tenure. In many cases I've been in, the most toxic faculty (the ones you are probably scared of) don't even show up to the vote -- they know they'll be shouted down. The service discussion, which I see in these threads and outsized discussion of, is less than 2 minutes, typically. "Yep, they did service" is about the extent of the discussion. Honestly, teaching isn't much longer (again: R1) -- we look at the classes taught and whether they are "good enough". Excellent teachers get noted, but even mediocre teachers are just a shrug -- so basically, we check the box on "teaching" and move along. Research is the largest amount of the discussion, but a lot of that falls back on citing the external letters and more or less counting pubs -- often breaking it into senior/first authored pubs vs. co-authored pubs. Lot of co-authored pubs but few first/senior authors pubs are discussed as a negative, but again, still don't rise to the level of voting no. In all but one case the votes were unanimous. Also, you know those offhanded comments some faculty said to you in the hall when they were looking for a favor? They never come up again. That faculty forgot the comment years ago, but you've spent years thinking about it. In the end, someone writes up a summary of the discussion and the votes, they share it around, and folks have a last chance to edit the "letter to the chair". These are often supposed to be "just the facts" but you can tell they are spun in a way to encourage tenure and to leave little doubt as the tenure case moves up the food chain. Even split votes are written positively.

TLDR: my experience is the votes are fast and err on the side of granting tenure, even in edge cases.