Q:

"Strategic" downvotes negatively affect the community

The point of the reputation system on Stack Overflow (and all SE sites!) is to encourage good answers to rise to the top and bad answers to not be the first seen. However, when reading through some meta-SE posts, I stumbled across this one:
Six simple tips to get reputation fast on any Stack Exchange site
You'll note that #2 is "use downvotes strategically", and a user in the comments explained that this means downvoting other answers so that yours rises to the top. Even though this is discouraged with the -1 "penalty" if you will, I have no doubt that this happens frequently. 
This is extremely disturbing to me as it threatens the validity of up-voted answers, or the dis-validity of down-voted answers. I have had answers of my own down-voted, but it was because the answers I put were, well, not good. I understand that! But this feels like cheating, and I feel like it hurts the community. 
This is a discussion, and I am trying to get my thoughts out about that. But to the moderators of SO, which is the SE site I use most often: 

do you see this often? Is there anything that can be done about it? 
To users with high rep: have you done this, deliberately down-voted answers, even if they were better than yours, to get some rep?
To users who are building rep, and who benefit from the site as much as I do: does this bother you as much as it bothers me?
Most importantly: what can I, as a fairly frequent visitor of the site, do about it?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.   

A:

Almost the entire post refutes the claim of "strategic downvotes" (which is Point #2).

So only Point #2 is purely evil and should be somehow monitored and actively counterattacked, but I think that's what Jeff & Co. have been doing since almost Day 1. -https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/17363/178816
2 is highly unfair, gaming the system, and preventing its usefulness. -https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/17207/178816

Jeff Atwood shows that list to lead into the discussion of how the community felt with regards to a blog post. I do not think that post is suggesting that users follow that list, merely trying to get feedback on what the community thought about its publication and overall sentiment.
Clearly there was negative sentiment towards strategic downvoting, and I do not think there is anyone advocating taking that action.
Also, sometimes Tim loses his keys.

