I tend to think of this unfortunate feature of the system as stemming from the same old school vs. new school battleground that gives us the idiocy of some voters making a distinction between "first ballot" and otherwise. [If MLB wanted them to think along those lines, they'd instruct them accordingly]
For every informed voter like Rob Neyer and Tim Kurkjian out there, there's still an egocentric like Rick Reilly looking for attention and controversy, and a couple of embittered local paper beat writers and columnists who, longing for an era of sports journalism long since dead, and cursing bloggers and Bill James for ruining the game every step of the way, continue to vote the same way their bosses taught them to when they were coming up, bellowing with whiskey breath through cigar smoke in between lamenting the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn and comparing every player to their best friend The Mick: they go with their "gut feelings" and the "eye test" and waffle year over year about whether or not their instincts told them "That guy's a Hall of Famer" the first time they saw the sun glisten off his spikes as he stood (majestically, no doubt) in the outfield at the old Veterans Stadium. By treating the Hall of Fame balloting process as some sort of dramatic metastory, and reserving the right to "change their minds" after ten years, they can add one more chapter to the story of a ballplayer's career and their own portfolio. And, conveniently, in the process they bestow upon themselves a feeling of power over these athletes they both desperately worship and loathe at the same time.
The theoretical point of being on the ballot for 15 years is, I suppose, to allow time for people to become more educated on a player, and refine their opinions after consideration. I just don't think it's working that way, other than in the sense that it allows time for public outcry and campaigns, and enough time for other writers to cajole the neanderthals into voting the right way by mocking their arguments in public. I guess, as someone who spent the better part of a decade proselytizing about why Bert Blyleven was getting the shaft in Hall of Fame voting for a week or so every January, only to see the system work as I just described, I can't complain too much. If it works for Morris, too, though, I'll consider it an injustice.
I actually think it would be a worthwhile modification to the system to (a) first shrink the voting pool by using an algorithm that takes away the vote of anyone outside a certain variance from the "average" ballot, and then (b) once you've a reliable pool of non-jokers and grudgeholders, just make it a one chance system. Force everybody to do their homework and have their debates now, once and for all for any given player, and then vote their true feelings the first and only time they vote on that player. That would probably require a longer period between retirement and ballot, I think, but that would be OK.
FWIW, I'm firmly in the camp that has limited outrage toward the players of the steroid era and says just vote them in and put an imaginary asterisk next to them when you talk about their possibly tainted accomplishments if you need to, for a number of reasons. Among them the very muddy understanding of how many guys were using and in what capacity; the very limited quantification of what specific performance enhancement was gained (and denial of the ridiculous amount of work it takes to make them have their desired effect on muscle-building); the impossibility of separating the significant number of simultaneous developments in the majors that independently and significantly increased homerun hitting and the prominence of the power game during the same era; the historical (very open) use of amphetamines and other drugs in the game that had a not trivial performance enhancing effect and our complete lack of discussion of those as a basis for comparison; and the fact that (a) the league, (b) the media, and (c) most importantly, the fans, sent approximately zero strong signals to players imposing a norm of "that's wrong and cheating and we'll villify you someday" regarding steroids until well after the fact. Chastise them now, express our disapproval of lying to Congress, put a mention of their involvement in the scandal on the description of their career at Cooperstown. That's all good with me. But pretending they never played the game, never thrilled us with their abilities, this doesn't make sense to me. It seems like projection of our own guilt in complicity. Are we so afraid of having the conversation with our sons about the 1990's in baseball that we have to whitewash it out of existence and treat the "punishment" of all these players as the end of the matter? Teachable moment, in my mind.
Anyhoo, that said my ballot would have included Bagwell, Biggio and Raines as in, although I understand reservations on the part of others, and Bonds, Clemens and Piazza as no brainers. I personally find Bonds and Clemens (especially Clemens) to be detestable humans on most every front, but they're also the best pitcher and hitter of the postwar era, far and away. And Piazza, undistinguished as he may be as a defensive catcher, is without argument the best hitting catcher in the history of the game, with a career OPS+ of 143, and it's difficult with that offensive record not to say he's clearly one of the 5 best catchers of all time. How's that not a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame?