For our badge ranking, we now do the vote thing as well.
Back when we received our charter though, I did devise what I thought was a pretty fair way of ordering the first set of badge #'s. We of course gave 1,000,000 points to the guy who really pulled it together. After that, you were awarded 75 points per active semester (this was a big deal as we took 3 years to get our charter), then 100 points for being E.C., 90 for L.C., on down the ranking to 30.. and you got 30 for any committee you chaired or any really minor officer position.
When you found a brand new chapter, as you might imagine, everyone pretends that they don't care what their badge # is, but that's a total lie
It's probably different for a recolonization though.