I don't know how many of you are long enough with this ecosystem to remember an idea Ned Scott presented as "revolutionary" back in the day of the old blockchain: one-account, one-vote.
The idea wasn't for the core blockchain, but for SMTs and communities. And Ned thought that being able to have equal votes every account at the SMT level was great. It's no wonder he led the other chain where he did.
So, why "one-account, one-vote"? To mimic what is going on in democracies, where every person has one vote, no matter if one is a billionaire, in the middle-class or a beggar.
Why does this supposedly work in democracies? The key-word is person. Not account.
In a system where multi-account is permitted, you can't have "one-account, one-vote" model. Because it's different than "one-person, one-vote". Unless you decide to implement KYC. Yeah, right...
If you have such a model, it will eventually be abused. If rewards with monetary value are involved, you can be almost sure of that.
That's why stake must matter when distributing votes that decide where rewards go. You can't have someone with no stake have the same vote weight as someone with a sizeable stake.
I know it seems harsh towards those who don't have the means to buy their stakes. But if such as system isn't in place, then you create a heaven for abusers, which will be even worse for everyone, including those who have no stake, but are honest.
One more thing. Abusers are difficult to combat in a one-account, one-vote model. Ban. blacklist or fight the known multi-accounts and they'll just make other/more accounts.
The options that I believe would work is to make it economically unviable for such a network to keep profiting (if you can find such a solution), or to change the system and add stake-weighted votes.
Nothing is ever simple, huh?