The fact that this has to happen to have content rise to the top is a bug, and it needs to be fixed. It's understandable that many people won't visit the "new" page, and that most consumers don't upvote, but that doesn't mean that something shouldn't be done about it. Maybe 10% of posts on the front page (random placement) should be new content being given a chance to be voted up. Maybe those submissions could also be marked in some way, so it's clear why they are shown (but only if doing so won't cause people to ignore those submissions).