I think part of the issue is also that the rewards pool is getting drained at a quicker rate. I don't have any numbers to quantify this, but the amplified voting change is causing the rewards pool to drain faster from what I understand. I think this implies that we should see a correction in the amount being rewarded if the same rate is sustained.
Isn't the rewards payout rate fixed to the inflation rate? I thought voting just proportionately reallocated those rewards rather than altering the rate of distribution.
From what I understand, there's a fixed pool that all of the rewards come out of (this is why pending payouts are always changing up and down over time), and the inflation fills that pool. This is also why HF 18 (I think? or was it 17?) which changed the nature of the rewards pool caused the rewards to drop so significantly for like a month while the pool was refilling.
Maybe I should go parse the code and try to figure out what's going on for realz... @biophil, @sneak, @vandeberg... I summon thee to help us find an answer!!!!
That's my crude understanding as well, though I've never actually read those bits in the code.