There are three categories of HIVEians excluded from the airdrop based on how they voted on the other blockchain. (14) Steemit accounts, (18) Tron sock puppet accounts, and (300) accounts of other HIVEian's which fit into an arbitrary category. This arbitrary category discriminates against those HIVEians based on three criteria. My post addresses the third category of HIVEians only, not Tron's sockpuppets or STINC accounts.

(1) More than 1k steem power and
(2) voted a minimum of two sockpuppets.
(3) or proxied a minimum of two sockpuppets.

These individuals voted either for a witness or a proxy. When you set a proxy for your witness vote, the proxy votes for your witnesses with your steem power. So basically, proxies act as a kind of collectivized voting entity with constituents of their own, they're kind of like politicians on the blockchain.

One of the forbidden proxies on this list of 300, is proxy.token, a strong favorite of the Korean community and others because of their purported stance against downvotes. I know this because, before Justin Sun's arrival on the scene, I set them as my proxy for a short time because they sold themselves as anti-downvote. After some digging, it didn't look like they were voting according to the polls they conducted, so I cleared their proxy.

Had I not done this digging, I too would have been swept up in the witchhunt to purge "quislings" as you put it in a prior exchange. But here in comes the problem, my intention for voting them wasn't because I was a quisling, it was because of blockchain politics entirely unrelated to Justin Sun and his ambitions. You see, as a friend once put it to me, not everyone on the blockchain is a single-issue voter.

Because of the nature of the conversation, it was a profound statement to me, because I saw the truth behind it, and it altered my paradigm a bit. If you accept it as truth, you might come to realize that not everyone that voted for a proxy who voted for a sock did so intending to split the chain. For a while, there, (very curiously,) the consensus of the dPoS appeared to settle upon a stalemate—It was as if the voice of the chain was saying; "can't we all just get along, and until we can, nobody is going anywhere."

I believe a lot of individuals and entities split their witness votes in such a way as to support a stalemate because they didn't like decentralization, and they didn't want to see the chain get split either. Splitting votes between the two parties is a message in and of itself, it's a vote for gridlock, or effectually, a nonvote vote. Think peacemaker. Now I can't say any certainty what proxy.token or the intent of other proxies were. Were they acting as peacemakers to prevent a catastrophic split or were they quislings.

Voting is when a community gets together and casts their ballots to see in which direction a thing will go, and based upon the outcome of the vote, it is understood that community members will concede to the will of the group as a whole. If after the vote, we choose to ostracize or discriminate against people because of their choice, instead of allowing them to fall in line with the will of the community, then what just occurred wasn't a vote at all but rather an exercise in obedience.

In communist countries, you can only vote for approved party members. To do so otherwise might put your life, physical safety, or assets in danger. Voting in those countries is not a real exercise of self-determination. This is because of the looming threat which, causes the voter to act under a state of duress.

I think HIVE can do much better than that. To me, what was done with the ninja mine by Sun's STINC accounts and his proxies were a clear attempt at a coup. Yet, the dragnet which followed that swept up so many low-powered accounts was illogical and hypervigilant to the point of being self-destructive and antithetical to the spirit and definition of what voting is supposed to be.