I'm not certain that it would be bad for people to be able to see reputation before voting. I do agree it would be quite possible for people to abuse this by allowing it to influence their votes. However, it is already possible to jump on the bandwagon to some degree, by checking out Best Nodes and Worst Nodes (and why is it that 'Best' encourages you not to add a vote just because others have, but 'Worst' doesn't? hmm...).

Some good could come from seeing reputation before/without voting. As athomason mentioned, curiosity is possible where one does not feel qualified to vote. An example: I know nothing about a topic and see two posts which contradict each other; seeing the reputation could tell me a bit about which one fellow monks (who hopefully do know the topic) consider better.

Another reason was brought up by turnstep in RE:RE:Keep the vote XPs. Don't incrase vote #.. I think that higher monks, at least, could be trusted with the power to affect over- and under-valued nodes (if they wanted it--seeing reputation should be an option).