63

And by someone, I mean that evil feline WesleyDavid:

ONG WTF Ponies! 42 votes!

That screenshot was taken just before 4pm PST, i.e. just before 0000 UTC. That shows KittehHead's votes for the month, which is the same as for the day since it's March 1st. Just to be sure it wasn't that SE had the time wrong, I tried upvoting something and got the expected "Daily Vote Limit Reached, Please Vote Again in 6 minutes."

So how did Kitteh^H^H^H^H^H^HWesley get 42 votes in one day?

ADDED: It's getting worse... Now it's March 2nd, and Wesley/Cat has 3 extra votes:

Die Kitty! Die!!

Now I finally got an extra vote (take that evil kitteh!), but it hasn't helped me understand why:

enter image description here

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12
  • 33
    P.S. Love the 1995 mouse cursor scheme
    – Mark Henderson
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 4:19
  • 25
    I have used the "Dinosaur" mouse theme since NT 3.51 and I have no intention of changing.
    – Ward - Trying Codidact
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 4:29
  • 3
    Possibly related: How do I get more than 40 votes per day?, Voting more than 40 times on first day of the week, a bug?
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 4:46
  • 11
    Reference to tired meme about the number 42, Douglas Adams, yada-yada =)
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 4:49
  • @CodyGray Those are similar, but not quite the same. It's probably a similar bug to the one in your second link due to the new system of counting votes on deleted posts.
    – Ward - Trying Codidact
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 18:29
  • If you're a brony, that'd make a nice complement for your faithfulness to the old cursor scheme. (No rule on meta outlaws judging people by their gravatars!)
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 19:09
  • 8
    Kittehs > Ponies
    – Wesley
    Commented Mar 2, 2012 at 19:13
  • Votes are presumably subject to skew in just the same way as rep is. Even after the recent changes, we still have rep skew.
    – David Heffernan
    Commented Mar 4, 2012 at 20:44
  • 5
    Solution: delete @WesleyDavid's account. Then he won't have voted more than allowed! (:
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 21:58
  • 2
    @RebeccaChernoff wut
    – Wesley
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 22:36
  • @RebeccaChernoff It seems like the simplest solution, I'd hate to tie up any worthwhile SE Valued Associate time when simply wiping WesleyDavid's existence out of all SE databases would do it!
    – Ward - Trying Codidact
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 23:15
  • I have recently spent 85 votes on SO, and that's not even the cap. See PeterJ's activity page, especially tonight.
    – Petəíŕd the Wizard
    Commented Sep 16, 2023 at 7:03

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
47

Votes on deleted posts do not count towards your daily total.

WesleyDavid did indeed vote 42 times in one day: two of the target posts were deleted before the day ended, allowing him to have those two extra votes.

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4
  • 1
    This reminds me... Does editing an old post to remove a vote grant you more votes to cast "today"? (Brought up here: meta.superuser.com/questions/4492/…)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 22:01
  • If the locked-in vote was cast today, then yes. If it's older than a day, it won't affect today's quota.
    – Jarrod Dixon
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 22:03
  • 3
    Why is this status-bydesign though? Clearly, the voting counter is broken.
    – Cole Tobin
    Commented Dec 11, 2013 at 15:41
  • 2
    @Jarrod if I vote 30 times, then five posts are deleted, and then I vote 10 more times, will I get the Vox Populi badge?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 14:15
27

I suspect deleted votes are treated inconsistently, counting towards the stats, but not towards the limit.

There was a recent change related to displaying deleted votes in some statistics: "Votes cast" should include votes on deleted contributions

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1
  • 3
    This appears to be correct. Today, I've cast 36 votes in total (taken from the user info popup), but got a message saying I had 5 left for today. One of the posts I voted down ended up being deleted.
    – a cat
    Commented Mar 3, 2012 at 16:13
12

Jarrod's answer is the correct answer, but to spell it out more precisely:

  • Votes are counted per day, and the day starts at 0000 UTC
  • If a post you voted on during the day is deleted before the end of the day, you will get that vote back

As an extreme illustration:

  • One of the auto-delete processes for low-quality questions runs every day at 0300 UTC
  • If you search for those low-quality questions and downvote a bunch of them between 0000 and 0300 UTC, you'll get all those votes back.
  • For example: yesterday, I got 70 votes total (30 extra) and earlier this week I had 60 (20 extra). So instead of 120 votes this week, I've maxed out at 170!

extra votes

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1
  • So you want us to stay awake in the midnight to gain more votes??
    – Optimus Prime
    Commented Mar 18, 2017 at 15:08

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