It's worse than that.

P.S Hive account@timsaid will be voting everyone who comments for my number (1), and I have to say his upvote is very generous. Thanks a lot Hive account@timsaid :)

Just straight up buying votes, so the comment about it not being about the upvotes and about the support is a little funny. The support is obviously not legit if it is paid for. There's multiple alt accounts voting too. Hive account@trueflip didn't specify that this is off limits though, so probs get away with it as well. But, it's them who have to live with it. I just worry that it is going to give Steemit a bad name, because this competition got some exposure on coindesk and the likes. A follow up article about how the 30K winner essentially paid for their votes is going to make us look like a bunch of scammers.