My contests don't require upvotes. Each post informs that contestants may upvote my comment or post their own comment to receive rewards. The rules state that upvoting will increase a contestants share of rewards as the prize pool grows in proportion to their vote values. Additionally, Hive account@votum is not created by or associated with steemit, and there are many contests posted by other accounts that require upvotes and are not flagged, so that explanation doesn't make sense to me.