It's true that there are voting pools and people do self-votings, and these activities are against from the purpose of Steemit, as well as from what they advertise.

However, there're also some people making a reasonable amount of rewards by writing a good article. In that sense, I think it's just a half-working system at the moment.

I hope they make the system better when they launch an official version (you know, it's still in beta period).