It is down to community and direct follow votes. Community votes are small upvotes cast by a number of "subcommunities" of curie that look for specific subject areas etc. Direct follow votes are votes cast by curie as a result of a top curator upvoting a post.

Both of these types of upvote are small (a few percent at most) in comparison to the normal curie vote of 20% VP or upwards, so that's why there are a number of people with a large amount of curie votes - their rewards however, will not match what you are expecting from a "big curie" vote.

The reasoning behind the direct follow upvote is to continue rewarding authors after they have received the bigger curie vote should they continue to post high quality content. The example of steemmotion having 172 curie votes - if you look at the percentage for that author, they have 0% curie votes giving them a 0.06 $ payout from curie. It's probably as a result of someone voting on another trail that curie follows at a low percentage.

You can rest assured that what you think about curie and the larger votes that it gives out is exactly the case - only upvoting new and under-rewarded posters who produce exceptional content.