As a newbie, I will try not to say anything stupid here...

I think cjf hits it on the nose here:

Someone wastes x amount of their time, doesn't learn anything...

Wouldn't it take a heck of a long time to become a Saint just by voting? I would think that anyone negative enough to want to become a Saint by downvoting would lose interest and go away long before racking up such a huge number of XP. That'd be an awful lot of time to waste for no concrete benefit.

I'm not saying there are no benefits to Sainthood; what I'm saying is that the benefits I perceive, as a newbie observing Monastery dynamics, have to do with your experience and advice being especially desired and attended to and respected. If someone's just interested in voting, and not posting nodes, those benefits would presumably not mean anything to them, so there'd be no advantage for them.

This is just a long-winded way of agreeing, and offering my novice's perspective on Sainthood.

Update

Sigh...I should've known to be careful about posting in a node about downvoting! Oh well. Note to self: Think with care, post with care, vote with care.