Indeed, the respectable members deserve to be voted. But the respectable forum members shouldn't give merits to those people who are giving votes to them (I'm not accusing everyone). They should at least check the activity of the users before giving him merits.
I like to give most users the benefit of the doubt, so I expect that this was done in a way of saying thanks, or appreciating the vote. I don't think there was any other motives to it, at least at the start. I still probably am on the side of that other users voting were changing their votes based on the potential merit they could earn, rather than integrity.
But some actions need to be taken in this case. And some depth investigation is also needed to check if anyone else has done the same thing or not.
Good work on figuring that out, I suspected that there were users that were going to try this, but didn't have time to check myself. This just confirms our suspicions.
These abusers can do anything to take benefits from the forum. But the respectable members should show more responsibilities in this situation.
Some have posted here since that they're going to refrain from rewarding merit based on users voting for them, although it's likely too late for the integrity of the votes, they are definitely standing up, and acknowledging that this could have been an issue. Again, the OP could potentially look at the voters, and exclude any votes they believe were artificially voted for due to looking to gain merit, I believe there was a rule that they could use their discretion for who can, and can't vote.