Since all voters must rate every image shown (with at least 1 point), fake accounts cannot make their own image win unless that image is also recognized as a winner by the other 1,000 plus voters. A fake account voter seeing their own image with all the fake accounts they have would only add five points per account — 5 accounts would add 25 points, hardly winner material unless most of the other voters share the enthusiasm for their images.
They must also assign scores to the other 39 images in each batch in order to move on to the end. If the system randomly selects which 40 images each voter sees, they may not even encounter their own image.
Declined:
Thanks for laying this out. Voting stays as it is: the server picks each entry you rate, fewest votes first, so every entry gets about as many ratings and nobody chooses what they see. Ballots that rate nearly everything the same no longer count.
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