LEO is favoring voting for authors based on money paid to LEO. This isn't hidden, it's out in the open. I've seen direct statements from Khal saying that the way to get more votes is to buy a subscription, for example:

It seems to be one rule for one and not the rest as far as i can make out.

I don't have time to spend on every abuse of voting power on Hive. Like everyone else, I pick my battles when it comes to injustice, or I would have no time to do anything else. So as it relates to Hive, I choose to focus on the most egregious offenders who are most likely to cause financial harm to the most people.

There is a lstr.voter that is auto.voting holders but that is a separate project albeit linked to the leo team.

"linked to the leo team": yes, that's one way to put it. How about saying it is the same people?

I know from years of experience how much drama and controversy is caused by downvoting and it's the smaller users and hive/leo community that suffer when we see these actions.

It's almost the exact opposite: downvoting of this type actually gives small, unaffiliated users who aren't in on the voting scheme more rewards (because the rewards pool size is fixed). But perhaps you're talking about hurt feelings, not rewards. I would buy this argument if the users complaining weren't always complaining exactly about rewards they didn't receive.

And I know that Khal is not always the easiest character to talk to as he throws strops when these things happen

We view Khal differently: you apparently view him as a basically good guy who just doesn't control his mouth well. I believe he is a con artist and a liar who makes up stuff from thin air to suit whatever narrative will make him money.

Just yesterday he was claiming that he thought it was likely that "hive core" (whatever that is) was DDOSing his node (I'm not sure what "node" was in this case, whether it is a witness node, an api stack, or something else). Somewhat laughably from my point of view, he and his compatriots have several times accused me of wanting to kill LEO because it somehow damages some scheme I'm running to extract money from Hive. Which is funny because I spend way more money on Hive than I make on Hive. But of course, that's not convenient to his story. He needs there to be some nefarious scheme behind my opposition to his voting schemes, otherwise he would look bad.

For the longest time, I paid no particular attention to Khal, but over time, it's become obvious to me what kind of person he is, and I think his impact on Hive and Hiveans is a net negative. Inevitably he will cost some people money, and there's not much I can do to stop that. But I'm certainly not going to help in the process.

Working together or towards a common goal is always better than fighting over a few pennies.

"Working together" with LEO guys is a joke. Maybe you haven't read much of what they've published about Hive stakeholders, but if you do, it should be pretty obvious to you that they are not particular interested in working with anyone on Hive that isn't sending them money.

Look at the money being drained from the chain by the DHF every week and see how a few votes compares to that.

If we want to talk "magnitudes" of money: for most of the time that the DHF has operated, I've spend more of my own money on Hive than the entire DHF. Does that mean I shouldn't worry about what I vote on in the DHF? I'm guessing you will think otherwise.

But for the most part, I don't think the DHF money is wasted. Otherwise I wouldn't vote for the proposals. But it is true that many proposals will fail to deliver in terms of return. This is the nature of startup-style investment: it is high risk investment with the hope of a few big winners among many losers. But voting schemes are guaranteed not to have a return: they are a strict loss.