People are buying steem power mainly to increase their voting power, they don't care about downvoting power.
The reason is that when you downvote you basically get a penality, you effectively lose money which is why hardly anyone uses this function.
Not so. It is an open vote until the payout window closes. That most people up vote is because of the eternal good natured spirit of humanity, and the fact that up votes are a more effective use of voting power, i.e. in curation rewards and in goodwill.
Remember that it's called pending payout before payout. Honestly I blame the UI for misleading folks to the conclusion that the money is given before payout.
I will be publishing an article in the next few days about this so we can debate more then.
Looking forward to this.
They are done just before payout window closes because I don't want my upvotes to lose value.
I think you must misunderstand how it works. The up votes do not depreciate in value, it is the reward pool that changes dynamically over time before payout. If you do know about it then you're just tricking yourself if you think that.
I meant to say I don't want the posts that I vote on to lose value.
Ah so. You mean you don't want them to attract flags because of your vote. Understandable, but defensive as @transisto says
Re-read my post please, that's not what I said.
I have and it still seems that way to me. Can you clarify?