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.
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.