It was very clear and explicit that the author told who to vote and who not to vote. Either proxy him or vote the list he wrote. Let me quote:
Prove your votes below to earn a nice sized upvote from me!
Either PROXY ME https://beta.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-proxy?proxy=theycallmedan&approve=1
Or VOTE HERE: https://steemitwallet.com/~witnesses VOTE FOR 22-42 at a minimum, we need to vote for the same witnesses to maximize our votes! USE ALL 30 OF YOUR VOTES!
MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT VOTING FOR SOCK PUPPET ACCOUNTS!
Well... technically it doesn't say who to vote on. it says to maximize the votes, we need to vote for the same, but not who the same were and the 22-42 would have been changing. The proxy is a choice to make. Either way, I think the person would have got votes.
Are they not sockpuppets that threaten the decentralization of the chain, something that nearly every user on the platform disagrees with?
And speaking of the disagreement. If you and others did disagree with this particular call to action and the votes that were handed out, you would have been able to null the votes through downvoting for disagreement of rewards. That is what they are for.
I do not see this is votebuying as it was completely opt-in - it is definitely a call to action though and like I said, @theycallmedan and others have used this many times before to gather support for community benefits. No one complains if it is to get a listing on an exchange, but it is a problem to defend a dPOS chain from centralization?
It seems that you view this in a very different way. If you think that asking for proxy in exchange of vote ( "Prove your votes below to earn a nice sized upvote from me! Either PROXY ME ..." ) is okay ("choice to make"?), well, I guess we don't need to talk about this anymore.