My hope is that with a 50/50 split, the paid voting bots will disappear or evolve
They will most definitely not disappear, au contraire. Because of the lowered rewrpards for creators, they will operate at a lower cost, but possibly even with a higher profit margins since they themselves will get a higher amount of curation rewards. Add to that the fact that they also suggest to do away with the reverse auction and bots can come immediately and claim the majority of all rewards again, completely without any penalty.
For the health of the platform, and community, it is the most shortsighted idea which could only come from emotions large stakeholders/operators who whether want as fast and as much ROI as possible or briefly lost it.
The sad thing tho is that this is a very high stakes game and could become Governance. At which point short term vision will have ruined the platform.