Not fully automating, means humans for each reddit big enough. (What is big enough?)
That is expensive. So this probably means lots of decisions in short time for those administrators ... means lots of wrong decision and lots of drama.
Voting? Who has the right to vote? Anyone? Any socketpuppet account? Only verified real people? (would be a different reddit)
I think eligibility should be based on a minimum karma-within-subreddit (comments and submissions) threshold.
And yeah, this would cost Reddit some in admin labor, but they should be able to use some of this revenue stream towards those few hires. I'd imagine a team of 6 would be plenty for this purpose, maybe could get away with 2 or 3.
Voting? Who has the right to vote? Anyone? Any socketpuppet account? Only verified real people? (would be a different reddit)
The base problem is called politics.