The all-too-sad answer to this is that HN, like any other forum, has a particular demographic, and the demographic here (predominantly well-to-do urbanites) has a certain political lean. People, generally speaking, can not divorce their political beliefs from their actions and act purely objectively, which, for example, is why we have laws and company rules about even creating an appearance of impropriety.
You can ask, beg, threaten, whatever all you want to for people to be objective and measured and to follow the stated principles, but people will simply vote you into invisibility simply because they have a knee-jerk, primate-brain reaction to the ideas being posted. This is not a problem that can be solved, here, or anywhere else.
It's a human problem, not a tech problem.
On that note, it's best to never complain about being downvoted. It only attracts more downvotes.
If you look into my comments, you will see that most of them are downvoted simply because I differ from the main opinion of the demographics.
While it makes me a little sad to see an unjustified downvote I think that in the great scheme of things it doesn't really matter.
I'll keep voicing my opinion, for as long as I can even if that means I'm going to be downvoted. Ah, that includes "complaining" about downvotes as well just to fulfill the profecy ehehehe.
You can ask, beg, threaten, whatever all you want to for people to be objective and measured and to follow the stated principles, but people will simply vote you into invisibility simply because they have a knee-jerk, primate-brain reaction to the ideas being posted. This is not a problem that can be solved, here, or anywhere else.
It's a human problem, not a tech problem.
On that note, it's best to never complain about being downvoted. It only attracts more downvotes.