> You need a Hacker News account to upvote, and obviously having a large number of new accounts upvote something would trip a voting ring detector.

Correct, but what if I gave myself a couple or few months to prepare accounts? Do a search on blackhatworld (or another spam forum) for "aged accounts" and you'll see that you can generally buy them in tiers - the older they are the more expensive they are.

I'm not saying it's worth it or I think it's something people should do, but saying it's not possible or doesn't work is absurd.