Ideally, if you want to use paid votes you would decline rewards, or set the post beneficiary to @null or @steem.dao - 100% of the post reward should go to that. This is because, if you set a beneficiary, and use paid votes, you still get the curation rewards from the paid votes. So the only real way to counter paid votes is to trade the author rewards for exposure.

How to set beneficiaries: https://steemit.com/beneficiaries/@steemitblog/new-beneficiary-features-on-steemit-com