This sounds like a smart solution, or at least a good basis to start with. Full disclosure, I use the bid bots. As a minnow starting out it seems almost impossible to build a following without getting on the trending page. And you can't get on trending without having followers to vote you there. It's a catch 22, and the bots let you break it. I haven't posted much yet, but I think what I have is quality content, and it would be great to not need the bots to get exposure.
That said, I do see one other flaw in this idea. New users with only a dozen or so followers would have an extremely difficult time gaining traction. Let's say all of their followers upvote one of their posts. A week later they could post the greatest content in the world, and it would be buried by new posts before anyone could see it. So maybe the vote weight penalty could be related somehow to the inverse of the number of followers. This would allow minnows to get exposure even with a small following (that could vote for them often), but once they get more followers they also get exposed to the vote weight penalty.
RE: Steem Improvement Proposal: Revoting Power to counter Upvote Circles and Bid Bot Abuse