My understanding is that it was trying to give brand new users a couple dozen votes as 'encouragement' versus the very few votes that could happen, especially when the post isn't tagged well. Even though I don't think it's achieving that, I also don't think it was being done to be malicious.
I'm not trying to sugarcoat it per-say, just that it was being done with good intention for a small subset of people...that being brand new people who wouldn't even be seeing the 1% yet. But even this in the end I feel is causing more confusion than benefit (i.e. I got votes but no payout?)