Well, if your posts reach other Lemmy instances, those don’t need to delete them just because you ask them to…

I would guess the deletion hasn’t propagated to all server instances so it’s still showing up in those instances. I imagine that posts are truly deleted but just marked as such I the database. Therefore a down vote could still be attached to the now deleted post this incrementing the counter.

The good news is karma isn’t a thing here so don’t worry about getting extra down votes.

The Internet never forgets.

Federation is spotty

It may be gone where you post it, but might still be visible from a different instance

On my UI deleted comments show up as empty comments that say [deleted] and you can see who wrote it. I’m guessing people downvote deleted comments out of spite because they’re annoying.

Also, weirdos will check what your comment used to say and reply to it anyway. I hate when they do that.

Edit: Now I see that you are talking about posts, not comments. Disregard.

There’s a place in settings where you can hide down votes.