[gist]

I actually UPVOTED when I saw "implies a pretty big perceived power imbalance". It's possible that the downvotes took that as a negative where I was in agreement.

Downvotes (for whatever reason) mean that more people vote down than vote up (duh). As a result they can change simply because of the people that are reading a particular comment stream. Same comment on a different post could have entirely different results vote wise (at least when it's an intelligent comment as yours was).