So, if one can undermine both voting and consensus, why is voting worse?
One reason might be that I would automatically discount a flood of similarly worded messages from people who have never joined the discussion before. Consensus leaves me wiggle room to find ways to make adjustments, based on the rich fabric of information I get from lots of discussions.
Voting, on the other hand, is manipulable unless I have equal freedom to simply discount some votes. And that's fine, too. Except that it removes one of the big positives from the voting system, namely that it's more clearly defined and objective.
One solution that might be greeted with massive howls of protest (or might not!) would be to someday restrict voting to 'members' who have contributed at a level of say $20 per year, perhaps with some oldtimers grandfathered in for 5 years. There are pros and cons to this, obviously.
But it is a fairly common way of restricting voting privileges in nonprofit organizations.
--Jimbo