By voting for my "payout declined" comments and posts, you are supporting the highest-quality-community-approved-content of the top-earners!!!
I've concluded that the voting system is completely broken and will use delegation as an alternative.
Vote-selling is exactly like buying banner ads (paid-endorsements), which steemit doesn't seem to have the slightest "problem" with (I'd even buy some myself if they let you pay for them with steem).