Ron Paul was just a poor example for what you were trying to describe, particularly as a reddit specific phenomenon. Ron Paul appears to be "unusually" popular

Ron Paul was just a poor example for what you were trying to describe, particularly as a reddit specific phenomenon. Ron Paul appears to be "unusually" popular on reddit, digg, slashdot, youtube, myspace, and facebook (where no sockpuppeting should be possible) among other places. Could there be 100 people inflating those vote? There probably are. But Ron Paul's popularity is a more complex phenomenon and distracts from the general case.