Maybe there could be a different "home" feed, instead of trending, with some sort of google page rank algorithm, as @dantheman had previously touched on. This home feed would not display a vote option or the pending money-earned, until you click the link to view the post. This way, important and popular posts could be front and center, without needing to be the top earning post, and without affecting the site's current voting economics. Meanwhile, the trending (monetarily) feed could still be in the pull down, as is.
Just a thought to combat over-voting instead of leaving influential curators in the position to consider planting a flag to restore order, in a sense.