http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/uncyclopedia/images/7/70/The_fonz_thumbs_up.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080823233621

We've all seen that certain popular users now will get up-voted automatically by bots, in order to garner the nearly guaranteed curation awards, while other good posts may go unnoticed. I had an idea that might help with this, it wouldn't be a 100% cure but it might encourage voters to vote for a wider variety of users.

I'll describe how it works below using some arbitrary numbers.  I'm not here to haggle over the exact numbers; I'm just trying to get the idea across.

Let's say in a 7 day period, your first 4 votes for @mrposter would work exactly as they do now.  For the fifth vote, you might get 10% less curation, this difference would be awarded to @mrposter instead.  Successive votes would yield less and less curation award for you, and more of it would go to the poster instead.  This could work similar to the four post limit, refraining from voting for @mrposter would lower the penalty until it goes back to 0 again.

I think this would be a good change.  If your only goal is to help the poster out, then no problem, vote for them as much as you like, but if you are trying to earn curation awards, then you'll need to look around at a larger group of users.