How do I just set a vote?

Note that this module does NOT directly expose any voting mechanisms to end users. It's a framework designed to make life easier for other developers, and to standardize voting data for consumption by other modules (like Views).

For some examples of simple voting systems based on VotingAPI, check Voting, Fivestar, and Plus1.

The above quoted from the project page.

The above is a pathetically inadequate quote from the project page. All of those voting systems are SYSTEMS, they are implementations, I have to understand THEIR code before I can understand the voting API? That is a patently ridiculous answer. APIs without documentation should never be used.

If I can't understand the API, how will I understand those modules?

Not having documentation is amateur hour. Not having comments in the code is patently offensive. There's not even comments to tell you which function does what. Being told to go look at the uncommented code is triply offensive, and I would appreciate it if you would save your apologia for some case in which it will be useful, like never.

Go ahead and set this one to fixed too, but it won't change the fact that I haven't been helped, and documentation is NEEDED. Another module's code is NOT documentation! Period, THE END. It makes more sense for me to implement a simple rating widget! It will probably take less time than actually understanding fivestar so that I can understand votingapi.