Two and a half free 100% downvotes per day, or five at 50%, or however you want to use them are *in general* good for the Steem blockchain. But, yeah, there can be consequences.

Four weeks ago, downvoting Bernie <a href="https://steemit.com/hf21/@preparedwombat/oh-the-joy-of-free-downvotes">came back to bite me in the tushy</a> (this was before <a href="https://steemit.com/canttakethenagging/@berniesanders/it-s-time-for-new-and-improved-bernies">his very public change of heart</a>). 

Did I learn my lesson? 

Of course not. Learning lessons is not The Wombat Way. I continued sporadically downvoting. Yeah, again there were consequences:

<center>![6AE69D5F-BA06-4AE6-BD3A-24B1C3A978A7.jpeg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQ2N2Z4a4wfmWFb2isUD1aXYuGzgcycVnFnK5ibLsMDmw/6AE69D5F-BA06-4AE6-BD3A-24B1C3A978A7.jpeg)</center>

Of course they aren’t actually your rewards until they’ve entered your wallet. Stake-weighted upvotes and downvotes are in play over a seven-day period.

Hard Fork 21 introduced “free” downvotes that do no damage to your Voting Power. But as the saying goes, *There’s no such thing as a free lunch.* 

As I noted in a comment last time around,

>Meh, I’ve got my big boy pants on. I understood that flagging someone with way more SP than me could be dangerous.

<center>![309C81D0-310A-453E-B151-1DCE728DEC2E.jpeg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmP4WfvwgfW4JVvPMk3FkYrpbXSNnx28b1W7vW2mbVpJTu/309C81D0-310A-453E-B151-1DCE728DEC2E.jpeg)</center>

But the spread of Steem-Engine tokens means that getting knocked down to zero doesn’t necessarily mean mean getting knocked down to zero *everywhere*. ;-)

<center>![6989514B-B7D4-4501-A27C-86FFD5FD6819.jpeg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXnUdg4tQ67mtAoodg6g8fDVxNwBChP5wsFPsT3YVR9v9/6989514B-B7D4-4501-A27C-86FFD5FD6819.jpeg)</center>

<center><img src="https://s14.postimg.org/7k9hhyv1t/IMG_0530.png"></center>

**Beneficiaries:**
10% - @steem.dao
10% - @schoolforsdg4

**Edited to add:**

*“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”* — Edmund Burke

There were some typos in my original post. I’ve tried several times to fix them, but the edits seem to be inconsistently taking effect. The original post was at palnet.io in part because it will accept more than five tags.

The post that you are reading may or may not show the correct edits. Here are the mistakes, followed by corrections:

very public change of heart
his very public change of heart

Hard Fork 21 introduced “free” upvotes
Hard Fork 21 introduced “free” downvotes

doesn’t necessarily mean mean getting
doesn’t necessarily mean getting