Better hit detection is not the expansion of the hit box, it is simply making the hitbox the right size as opposed to the shrunken down 1.8 variant.
The poll had 1/8 votes to not update, not to mention cubes current playerbase, especially the forums. Most of the people on the forums who voted for this poll play 1.9 PVP. If cube were to go back to 1.7, then an even larger playerbase can join, I am not even asking for cube to go 100% 1.7, but maybe changing the 1.8 side to 1.7 would be a great addition, I understand that lots of redevelopment of the server would have to happen in order to make this happen, however I think the same can be said about 1.13/14. Maybe the CubeCraft community doesn't want this, but this could be a great way to get other communities involved in CubeCraft and could get the server more popular, there aren't many 1.9 PVP servers to get players from, anyone who plays 1.9 PVP plays on CubeCraft or very few play on a sub 10 player other server.
Alright some evidence, 3 of the top 10 servers are all 1.7.10 (accept a lowest version of it), badlion, cosmicpvp and the hive. 1/3 of the top Minecraft servers are 1.7 and they seem do be doing just fine. There is only one server in the top 10 that only allows clients 1.9+ which is FunCraft, a french server (their website is in french) who seems to be copying everyone else. Every other server on said list supports 1.8.
Minigames aren't necessarily supposed to be competitive they still can be, even you before suggested making a ranked eggwars gamemode (could have been different name). Also 1.7's better hit registration makes the game more fun. Minigames are meant to be fun so 1.7 fulfills that aspect.
More features are nice but the staff may not even include the new features. the main gamemodes on CubeCraft are eggwars and skywars (maybe bingo) how can we tie in curse of binding books into any of those? I guess tridents could find a place in the eggwars shop and skywars loot table but overall most of the features are either not going to change the game much or even entirely change the game around, which isn't necessarily wanted. There is a counterargument that these new features could help make more games but that would require staff to first update to the newer versions and create a game, linearly thinking double the work.
Aside from hypixel and their Chinese hosted counterpart, CubeCraft is #3 most popular server at the moment of writing this, so basically #2... CubeCraft could probably change something about mojang, they are the right size.
Trust me lots of people like 1.7 PVP. The hit registration is much better than 1.8. There really aren't any features cube would be missing out on in 1.7 vs 1.8. The playerbase of cubecraft would probably like 1.7 better. Sadly I hear it is harder to code for 1.7 however. If it is possible maybe CubeCraft could have 1.7 with cooldowns?
Sad to see you leave then I guess. Lots of people like 1.7 PVP. Yes CubeCraft would have to actually compete. But want to know something? CubeCraft would have something of a monopoly. I do not know of any 1.7 PVP minigame servers. That would be something CubeCraft could have to bring players to their server.
1.7 hacked clients being more developed is just proof that 1.7 is more popular and more developers code for it.
Updating to 1.10+ is a bad idea, it will be the point of no return to 1.7. It will be impossible to go back to 1.7 and will completely seal the fate of CubeCraft.
Remember the server mcsg (Minecraft survival games)? Well they are dead now. What killed them you may ask? Their update to 1.8 is what killed the server, that was the point they started losing players, people simply didn't like the hit registration 1.8 brought about. They didn't like the newer PVP so they lost a lot of their playerbase. CubeCraft now updating to 1.9. Which is highly disrespected by almost all of the PVP community CubeCraft could actually gain a lot of players if they went back into 1.7. Or at least changed their 1.8 half of the server to 1.7. I understand that CubeCraft wants to support the newest features but it seems CubeCraft is one of the main reason Mojang isn't receiving the message that no one likes 1.9+ combat system. The game is going to grow stale for servers that aren't up to date and sustaining good combat so people are going to stop playing their game which is going to stop advertisement for the game thus killing it. It's been 2 years since servers have had updates. 2 years. The game is going to die. And like I said. CubeCraft is kind of giving Mojang support, telling them the new combat changes are okay. Several people are starting petitions to create a gamerule for the future that changes it back to old PVP (not the lame excuse of the "classic" PVP kits in the duels lobby). If cube were to revert back to 1.7 then Mojang might finally realize that the updates they are doing is going to kill the game. This sounds stupid I know, not updating the server causing better updates is kind of ironic... But it kind of looks like that.