@zehjotkah,

One way to avoid calling this "spam" would be to have each person who wishes to vote send an e-mail (opt-in). Then the server checks if the person is qualified to vote and sends the 9 e-mails in one batch,

Hence it would be more like "on-demand voting" which would (1) clearly not be spam, and (2) spread (in time) the sending of e-mails, given that nobody would expect everyone (interested) to send the opt-in e-mail at the same time.

I really don't expect that >50K people will have interest in voting. So with the opt-in system (plus sufficient "publicity" so that people are at least aware of this) the number would be much more reduced.

PS: and please, if you filter on karma, make sure that karma >= 15 can still vote, otherwise I'm hosed