You know, it didn't even occur to me, but you're right. Usually, they do a tribe shuffle after about 4 people get voted off. The merge usually happens with 10 people and they are currently at 11 with no shuffling of tribes. In fact, I think only once was the merge something other than 10 and it was with 9 after doing a "fake merge" right before that.
I wonder if anything out of the ordinary is going to happen next week. Usually, the tribes can't sit the same person out in back-to-back challenges, but now it looks like they don't really have a choice.
I was confused by Stephanies vote, but I think I figured it out. She wanted Ibraheim out, clearly, but I think she was more concerned that Bobby Jon was feeding her a line. If he realized that she was the one that wrote his name down, she might tell her to vote for James, knowing James would vote Ibraheim, and then He (Bobby Jon) and Ibraheim could vote out Stephanie with 2 votes. I think she realized this and decided to protect herself by voting for Ibraheim first. Then, if they did vote for her, it would lock in a tie between her and Ibraheim. Since they did vote James, it was easy enough to switch her vote the second time.
It will be interesting next week to see if Bobby Jon confronts her on it.
Still, for all the talk of them trusting each other, I think it's pretty clear that they stop trusting each other the moment it comes to writing down names.
I just can't believe they keep losing. They have fairly strong people on their team, but they just can't pull it together. Each week, someone blows it for the whole team it seems. Jame's "just tie one good knot" was obviously not very successful.