Am not talking about excluding newbies by using that 50 merit criteria. Am talking about high ranked members who do not have up to that number of merit and as such will be disqualified from the voting process. It is not every member that gets merit when they make posts. And you know that.
If you show me a high ranking member who hasn't earned 50 Merits, I'll show you a member who's either been offline for years, or who's posts aren't worth reading.
If you want to reduce double voting, use activity points, which are calculated based on how long you've been here.
So all the bounty spamming Newbies with countless accounts with 1000 Activity and 0 Merit can influence the voting? Activity is easy to farm, Merit isn't.
It is possible for a merit source to merit a large number of members nearing the 50 merits mark and then PM them and buy their votes.
That's true. And if it's discovered, they'll get tagged for it.
A minimum of 30- 50 activity points required to vote will eliminate many things.
Users like
Abutaleb628 (882 Activity) or
Semar Mesem (1148 Activity) have no business voting.