Very simple: I don’t want to set a precedent that Stakers can retroactively give themselves money by voting.
We, as stewards, recognized that the incentives were out of balance, and want to correct that moving FORWARD from this point in time, as well as to incentivize NEW stakers, who are satisfied with a low-time-preference earning scale of 30% APR when staking for three years as opposed to the higher APR’s offered for Liquidity Mining rewards - again with the benefit of receiving liquid SOV for Staking as opposed to Vested SOV for LM.
Keep in mind that ALL Stakers By Choice will be receiving rewards during this program; they just won’t earn them for the period between when the program starts, and when they originally staked, they’ll only be receiving them on a bi-weekly basis from the point in time forward from when the program starts.