A process of "counter-voting" to address defects in the system, begs the obvious question... why not seek consensus on how best to fix voting imbalances and fix it?

As I stated earlier, it is not entirely clear that it can be fixed that way (not saying it can't, just not necessarily). Some problems require a degree of subjectivity; that's why we have voting at all, otherwise we could "fix the code" and make it reward the right content all by itself. It may just be that we need a two-way voting structure. Most equilibrium systems in nature (or created by humans) achieve stability through a balance of opposing forces. It is very difficult to make a system of upvotes without downvotes stable, perhaps impossible (see post by @bitcoindoom).

This does not mean that improvements in algorithms and code can't be made, and I support that, but they aren't necessarily the same issue nor solutions to the same problems.