The other comments suggest at most 10-15 upvoting sockpuppets, so either they obsessively registered many new ones to upvote this particular comment since posting it, or upvoting of past discussions was kept at a moderate level. A priori manual sockpuppets seem more likely, and given how carefully the banned comments were restored from The_Lion2 account, this person is sufficiently diligent to pull it off in manual mode.
Why would it be either manual or sane in this case?
The other comments suggest at most 10-15 upvoting sockpuppets, so either they obsessively registered many new ones to upvote this particular comment since posting it, or upvoting of past discussions was kept at a moderate level. A priori manual sockpuppets seem more likely, and given how carefully the banned comments were restored from The_Lion2 account, this person is sufficiently diligent to pull it off in manual mode.