I think one of the biggest problems is that people want a curation reward, and they want some decent content to read and view.
If the Auto Vote users had a list of content recyclers then the only votes that individual would ever get would be from new voters or friend voters. If the vote was to big from a friend, then a down vote to adjust the reward would maybe be called for.
If the auto voters did not waste votes of recycled content then there would be more quality content possibly rising to the top of the chain.