[@NeverEnding] oof, that does suck.

I did something very similar in one of my RPs, only it had to do with everyone voting for a character to kill off. Though it went a lot better for two reasons:

#1: As you said, it was handled mostly ICly, with some details being spread OOCly so that the players would know I was serious.

#2: The players were all notified up front that player character death was part of the deal.

Though in truth, the vote was going to get interrupted when my "PC" flew off the handle, and ended up being the one executed, rendering the votes pointless. But I decided not to do that in the future because one of the players PMed me and was upset because they had a falling out with one of the players in the group and suspected they had voted for them. I decided to ease on the OOC drama moving forward.