That's pretty simple. Let's say there's one dude with one main and 3 alt accounts. First month he gives all to one account, ok he got his rank, but... if tries to do that once more, he'll get caught ~ Pretty simple, don't try to cheat it anyhow.
Yes, every member who see any Abuse with Merit can report it to DT. And, all suspected account will investigated. So, play safe and say no to cheating.
In Meta we can see many Merit Abuser and easily detected.
I think the merit system is a good idea to drive away a lot of needless posts and make sure in most parts they are of higher quality.
~ found one user looked to have 7 accounts that were all different levels of activity!).
For someone who runs multiple accounts its easy enough for them to just log into another account and pass over the merit to a low activity user to rank them up?
So it will only affect new single account users if that makes sense?