little meta - HN is not the best place to have these discussions. the way voting works here, everything is too conformist, too sugarcoated, and most importantly, downvotes are regularly handed out (at least in such emotional discussions as political discussions are wont to be) according to the political views of the high-karma elites, and more particularly according to their lack of moral self-control (i.e. many will not "abuse" downvotes like that, but that then just gives more power to those doing it).
is it OK to assume that, among the people with high enough karma to cast downvotes, the distribution of political views equals that of the general commenting population? or, better question - does that even matter? i don't know, is it even possible to achieve some kind of crowd-sourced moderation without exposing the system to the risk of gangs of idealists attacking dissenters with downvotes?