Since you are talking about this so much, I'll say that (as I have for years) I'll upvote or downvote u/CrusaderPepe based on how I perceive his argument is going; sometimes he's within the pale. So, though I don't upvote him in every community he posts in, a few of my upvotes are being counted in your totals.

Since you point out he has a lot of supporters (in my view, mostly just the Catholic lurkers and blog readers who dutifully refresh his profile), he doesn't need much from me. Though I don't have animus for him despite our particular disagreement, as a courtesy to you and as a brief test of your theory I will cease to upvote him for an unspecified period so as to see if the data persist. There are times I do this with other contributors who clearly don't need my upvotes. I still don't agree that you should go around making a big meta deal of a particular number, but if the explanation is a combination of lurkers and bots then the real contributors would be well advised to withhold votes to see if the numbers stabilize more consistently to test the theory.