Instead of trying to be right or wrong, I am just going to give you my thoughts on all three as I have weighed them in my mind.
So first is his IGCD read. The first thing I think of is the person who was right there with Ben defending IGCD at the last second was Sbell. So in the vacuum of just the IGCD read it is possible Ben is scum defending him, but it has also proven true through Sbell that a town in misguided faith in IGCD can make that mistake. So it's not clearing of Ben nor is it damning.
Now I back away a step and look at where Ben's vote is. Sultan, another flipped scum. So I ask myself "Well, if Ben was willing to bus Sultan in order to keep up the act of protecting me and sheeping me, what benefit does it give him to all of a sudden not save me at end of day?"
Looking at Ulti he was:
* Low Energy * Vanilla
So what would make a scum Ben hesitate to vote this train but not Sultan's? For Ben to be scum he has come up with this complicated plan involving me but low energy vanilla Ulti is someone he doesn't want to bus in only to establish credibility? It doesn't make sense to me. There could be an answer I am missing, but I can't find it myself.
Next up, the fact that he is protection but alive. For all intents Ben's role as protection is over if Scum just accepts me being alive. If they can contend with me being alive, it frees their night kill choice selection up a lot and it is no secret the longer I am alive the more people start twitching. Ben isn't a doctor who can protect the tracker, for instance.
Actually why didn't 5tar protect the tracker. What the hell am I missing something? <_<.
Anyway so for the point about him being protection it is easy for me to see a scum team that just ignores Ben (who hasn't been great this game himself and may be mislynched if kept around) and focus more on people unlikely to be lynched.
As for setup meta... boy setup meta is hard here. Not sure I can make heads or tails given the nature of the game.
The easy answer is that there is more equity in a "confirmed town" scum partner ulti than sultan who can still fuck it up