2. No merit sending is allowed from nominees to users which nominated them.
This should reduce the drama involving votes. Just to be clear: the way it's written now you're counting all Merits sent to any of the users. I assume this only counts for merit sent in the voting-topic, right? Otherwise Merit sources will end up at around -500 votes.
Yes, this is correct. The measure was taken after the events which occurred at previous two contests.
So, as far as nominees are concerned, there's nothing prohibiting them from abusing with merit bribery, right? If someone wants to buy votes with merits, all that's needed is to merit them at some other post. The problem with this however, is that communication between the nominee and the voter is required (in contrast with previous contests wherein the voter knew it beforehand).