I have no problem with bots supplying up votes, I think it can be positive to ensure that you are consistently supporting a certain author or tag category. Something doesn't sit right with me about automated down voting though. That is too easily abused.
I know that up votes and flags (downvotes) are two sides of the same coin, so I don't know how tied together they are on a technical level, but if we could implement a way to block auto flagging I think that would help. Some form of captcha/ questionnaire to categorize the down vote reason that requires manual input. It wouldn't stop the flag battles, but if the participants have to spend a couple extra hours a day on them, maybe they'll reevaluate if it's truly important.
Also in favor of a "block" type feature that others have mentioned.