Hi David, yes, a change was made such that if the community votes the community taxon cannot be improved, and the community taxon and observation taxon do not match, the observation will become casual grade. This was implemented to solve some problems but introduced others. See this open topic about the recent change: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/research-grade-with-only-one-id-at-that-rank/3270/51
In this case, the community taxon is genus (Veronica) and the observation taxon is species (Veronca persica). If you do think the community taxon can be improved to species level, then you should not vote that it cannot be improved. If you disagree with the species ID, you should add a disagreeing genus ID.