Viᖚes is more general. For example instead of a vote total, envision the following are ranked by total units paid (to the creator of the question and/or answer):

http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/285362/choosing-two-random-numbers-in-0-1-what-is-the-probability-that-sum-of-them

In that context, 'codes' and 'keys' don't make sense.

Stackexchange's (originally stackoverflow) formula for social ranking is free to upvote (which pays 10 votes) and costs -1 votes to downvote by -2. Creating votes out-of-thin-air is debasement and means if you can Sybil attack the system (or just create a clique of real identities that always vote for each other) than can inflate the vote counts for yourself and your Sybil/clique identities! Then you can downvote anyone you want to destroy (all of this meaning I can destroy Stackexchange when I am ready) Participants gain only reputation value (and any indirect remuneration thereof) and no direct remuneration. That reputation value is not directly transferable or fungible off-site, thus all your effort locks you into an immovable investment (into your reputation and accumulated voting power) on that site which can only be transferred to the extent that indirect remuneration is achieved. Even without Sybil attacks, creating votes out-of-thin-air dilutes the effort of those who are not most active ongoing. Debasement is an effective method for depreciating savings such that current production is incentivized, but if debasement rates are too high then saving (investment of effort) is disincentized. Whereas if participants must bring in external fungible value then inflated vote counts represent greater system value; and not just longer duration (and/or heightened rate) of voting— which may represent increased or decreased system value.

My proposal has a flaw in that as the off-site fungible currency rises in value, then the preexisting vote reputations have greater relative weight compared to new votes, i.e. if the exchange rate between votes and off-site fungible units is constant. Thus either the exchange rate for votes should be tied to some more stable value unit-of-account (dollars? gold?), or votes can be a separate currency that is exchanged for the off-site fungible currency such that preexisting reputation vote counts (but not balances of votes earned) are scaled inversely by the changing exchange rate. The latter has a flaw that most might HODL votes for the speculative appreciation of exchange value, thus the value of the votes not representing users (and use) but rather speculators.