This problem has been addressed by just about everyone at some point. "Oh no, people are going around and voting down my work for what seems like no reason. It's not fair! etc..." Lets face it, this is a serious issue, and considering how much of an influence votes make, something should be done. Just about everyone's also has some 'solution' to this problem as well. A lot of the suggestions people make sound good on paper, but if applied would probably go horribly wrong.

Many will say that the reason downvoting is such a huge problem is because people can downvote something without any repercussion. Being able to downvote anonymously is part of the problem, but it's also a necessary evil. Cyprezz himself has explained before why votes should be anonymous. The possibility of an even worse form of trollvoting that may occur, Revengevotes justifies the anonymity. The basic jest of it being that if someone knew who downvoted their work, they might go downvote the trolls work to get back at them. At that point the vote system has just about lost all purpose and use.
"Well maybe we could have people provide feedback explaining why they down voted the work. maybe that would help would help..." No, not really! That's what the comments are for. Adding comments to downvotes just adds insult to injury because for every comment that is actually some decentn constructive criticism, ten will be about all the sexual acts your mother did with the troll. You'll wind up face to face with someone who thinks that all the hard work you did doesn't deserve to be appreciated nby others because "lolololololol U R so UGLY! F%$# YOU!", and after thatn there's nothing you can do about it. Plus if we tried to have mods judge these, then we'd have some crazy socialist system where your opinion has to be 'good enough' to vote. No thanks!

I've been giving this problem a lot of thought. (Probably more than I should be, but it's for a good cause.) I believe we're approaching this from the wrong angle.

The way I see it, the problem is not so much that voting is an anonymous act, but that we have a completely unlimited stock of votes without earning it. The moment someone makes an account non PMC, they could go downvote EVERY single piece of work on PMC if theyn really wanted to. I believe this is the true source of the problem. Do In have an exact solution at the moment? No. However I believe if we startn focusing on this part of the issue, we'll eventually be able to find a more effective, and applicable solution to the trollvoting problem.

Actually, I have one theory of what might work! Perhaps if there were a balancingn vote system, things would be better. What I mean by this is that for each couple downvotes someone gives, they must also upvote some other piece of work. This way trollvoting is at least slowed down significantly, and the best part is it doesn't affect normal voters in the slightest. Perhaps the ground rule could be that you can't give out more down votes than the number of upvotes you've given out. (Voting on your own work doesn't count.)

Of course that's just my opinion on the matter. Let me know what you think in the comments.