I'd agree, and not just for that reason. In my limited experience using Voat, making karma actually affect the functionality of your account not only discouraged lurkers and more casual users, but actively encouraged the sort of "karma whoring" you're talking about. By far the easiest way to farm points was to repost popular content from Reddit -- which made the site into even more of a Reddit knock-off than it already was, because lots of people did just that.