I believe you're overthinking the issue. If folks voted the brand spanking new sock puppet witnesses and then AFK'd, they reveal rather lax exercise of their authority during turbulent times - after they'd supported the agents of a Communist Takeover of Steem.

No matter how you slice it up, it comes down to voting in support of the enemies of freedom. If anyone wasn't capable of grasping the consequences of their actions, I don't consider them competent to wield that authority. Everyone that did was rightly not provided influence over governance of Hive IMHO.

The purpose of Hive is to enable people to exercise free speech in order to create a free society. People that oppose that, as all voters for sock puppet witnesses did, should not be given any power to do so on Hive.

Voting for elections IRL has consequences IRL too. It is a historical fact that revolutionaries are rightly executed by the institutions they seek to destroy. What other option makes any sense at all?

If my actual flesh and blood neighbors sought to enslave me to the CCP, I would be right to kill them, to defend my life and freedom. I would have no other choice. Hive did not do these totalitarians any wrong by simply not giving them free power to seek it's destruction.

Doing anything else would be suicidal.