It's not merely a democratic vote, where the most links wins, but what the algorithm does is evaluate the links based on the popularity of the originating domain. In other words, meritocratic rating.
You can apply the algorithm to any graph, and what it does is find the most influential nodes.
Meritocracy isn’t a thing. The person who coined it was rightfully mocking society. The recent 2019 Meritocracy Trap book goes further into this.
Your explanation is not “meritocratic”. The wealthy and powerful largely stay on top with the nuance you provided. The popular have more popular. are able to make what they link to more powerful and thus more popular. There is no meritocracy there.