People just 1-star crap all the time, and even though users tent to come in later and give actual ratings, so few rate threads that the results are pretty skewed.
I think a deterrent (though it'd need work so I doubt it'd be implemented) would be to make it so that a vote/rating requires a post, and is linked to (and visible within) that post, so people can single out the downvote fairy (yes Veho, I said that)... but that'd prevent voting on locked threads (say, announcement stickies and front-page directing news threads), so perhaps just something like polls showing who rated what when examining the rating, but the issue there is you wouldn't be able to see why ratings were given. I mean shit, look at all the 1-star reviews on newegg that are along the lines of "this CAT-6 doesn't at all, it's a fucking cable"... people can look at the contents of a review to tell if the review's an accurate representation of a reflection, or some dumbass that needs his typing licence revoked... so having ratings linked to posts is an obvious solution there, but that rungs right back into the issue of requiring a post, which, even in the case of unlocked threads, might encourage spam.
Then again if the rating/voting interface is available and visible on the posting page it'd make more sense that rates are linked to posts (and one rate per thread/person of course, edits allow rating edits in case a thread goes to shit or gets fixed later, etc.) and would encourage more people to rate threads they post in, if they feel like it.
But, you know, gbatemp's just going to ignore this, only to implement it later anyways, like half my suggestions.
