When I say flagging, I never refer to downvoting. I do not know why Hiveans use that as synonyms. To me, flagging is marking stuff (eg for a higher authority to review), downvoting is dealing with stuff by my resources.
So no morality reference. I just say the gamification can be more challenging if passing captcha gives players a bonus (in case I am sued: To give an incentive for bot makers to improve the AI not to discriminate against bots).
Giving regular users access to a bot that helps with vote timing would be another improvement on its own - thats what I usually say when people complain about bots in gaming.
Removing the competition comes with a price. It might be a good deal under some conditions.