Finally! Someone who mentioned HF 20. I'm including a screenshot of the two paragraphs from the late December update by steemitblog that address the changes that are set to occur when HF 20 drops. It not only talks about a 1.219 shift down of SP, but the elimination of the dust threshold.
It also says that basically powerless votes will have no impact on the blockchain, just I presume, as it is now. Just that the user will be able to vote to their hearts content.
So, if this is still happening, and the dust threshold is eliminated, how can it be raised (this question is for you or @timcliff or anyone else that can answer it) if it doesn't exist? And wouldn't this and the idea of raising a non-existent dust threshold be working at cross purposes, if a no defunct dust threshold could be raised?
Please excuse my confusion. Maybe the problem is the terminology being used, ie, dust threshold, has two different meanings here: one affecting the ability to vote, the other affecting if someone can be paid. As it is, I think both are addressed in the screenshot above, so I'm still not sure how this raised dust threshold is supposed to work. Add in the SP shiftdown, and I'm even less sure.
AFAIK that vote shift stuff is still in the HF20 development code.
On the topic of dust votes and dust rewards (as well as this post), there are two different issues, one concerns individual (very small) votes and the other individual (very small) reward payouts. I'm not aware of any already-implemented changes to the dust rules for reward payouts in HF20, only for dust votes.
Okay, that's the distinction I was missing dust votes vs dust payout. Thank you for clearing up my confusion. I really do appreciate it.