Members who rate the topic with merit points will select the most 5 ratings from them for direct entry into the campaign
While OP's idea looks good, the quoted one doesn't. And it is also mentioned twice. Be careful OP, this can be considered as merit begging and may lead to negative feedbacks. I'd advise to remove the part related to merits, in order to avoid such an unwanted outcome.
In fact you cannot merit "threads", but users. And yes this might get him in trouble.
OP is welcome to start a campaign, i think that goes into the services section of the forum, but should drop the merit thing ASAP.