You realize I did not say they were not???? That I understand the down vote system, and that according to the FAQ on steemit "Users are allowed to downvote for any reason that they want."

Down votes Flag button:

Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible.
Common reasons:

• Disagreement on rewards
• Fraud or plagiarism
• Hate speech or trolling
• Miscategorized content or spam

The down vote system is broken and has never worked the way some people envision it to work.

You and I hope other reading your post, do understand that buying of votes is a standard practice among many people on steem block chain, and unless people are able to have an effect on the sellers there is always going to be people selling their vote. Once again almost all down votes are because of Opinion and has nothing to do with decreasing or returning rewards to the reward pool.

All the free down votes are going to do is allow for people to have more opinionated down voting.

How you came to the conclusion that I did not think that downvoting was legal, from my comment is far beyond my ability to imagine.