That's always been the issue with reducing the vote target (equivalent to the proposed idea of increasing vote strength). It reduces the relative influence of more engaged users. With 10x it means someone can sign in for five minutes, make 4 votes, and have the same aggregate influence as someone who is voting all day and makes 100. That's why I've never supported this idea, at least not to any sort of extremes.
Bots are inherent in any system of this architecture and can be both good and bad. The devs really need to stop this futile crusade against 'bots' (futile to the extent it is based on simple parameter tweaks), at a minimum to the extent that it has side effects that cause negative (presumably unintended) consequences for humans.
A better idea that at least deferentially targets bots would be to introduce acceleration into the recharge rate so humans (who work, sleep, etc.) would recharge fully but bots trying to vote 24h/day would not.
RE: Proposing Steem Equality 0.19.0 as the Next Fork