Above you wrote,

You are assuming that your votes are actually counted, this is definitely not always the case.

I'm not seeing this. Some of what's on the site is "lazy loaded," as I recall being officially said, but to the best of my knowledge and belief a vote is a vote, and votes get counted. (There are two HN voters in my household, who visit different threads most of the time, and neither of us feel our votes aren't counted.) What would be definitive evidence of votes not being counted (as contrasted with some other possible explanations for what appears to be that condition)?

Whether you don't see it or not is not relevant, I'm seeing it and that's good enough for me.

Belief doesn't enter in to it:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=871202

It persists to this date, you just have to work a bit to see it in action.