I'm not in serious doubt of the value of a node vote (irrespective of the sender).
I guess I just get the niggling feeling that votes for AM nodes could be put to a better use.
There's also a completely unfounded suspicion on my part that suggests that a lot of monks avoid voting on AM posts for the same (however illogical) reason.
I see the primary purpose of votes as a way to moderate
individual posts as to their quality. The fact that the
owner of the post has a chance
of being "moderated" also is a side effect, IMO.