I can't rely argue against self-upvoting other than it defeats the purpose. We might be better served to encourage, and even do away with self-upvoting, by replacing it with viewable shares. In essence, the higher voting power USED (yes this guarantees automated voting for busy accounts) the more views of their own and other posts they can promote.
Minnows might vote on whales in hope of getting an upvote. Whales are more likely to upvote minnows that add value to Steemit. With no self-upvotes (including alt accounts) we do away with the snake eating its tail.
http://www.steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=machnbirdsparo&days=30
*Note: I do use Smartsteem so my vote rewards get recycled.
Thank you very much for your comment and the graph showing that no self voting is possible. It's what I am going to do now on. I upvoted your comment 100%.
Opps. Missed upvoting and resteeming yours. Not sure how I found you, but I hope to network with people passionate about their topics. Sometimes I get involved in the comments and busy with work and forget to save a good author so I can check their posts throughout the week. Isn't the Hivemind supposed to make this easier for us? It would be a blessing.
Thank you for the resteem.