As far as revenge down votes, that also comes with a risk. People who don't know the history will just see your revenge down vote and assume you are the jerk.
(Besides... big change requests like these are usually turned down by the HN admins.)
A way has to be provided to keep accountability and/or defend one's self. On sites like reddit, at least new accounts have the ability to down vote. If you don't fit the group think here you wont even get that chance.
And how long have you been on this site? Your score is 17 at the point of writing and your account was created 7 days ago.
So unless you had an earlier login id, (which is very possible, I am just asking) maybe you haven't been here long enough to make an informed judgment of how the voting system works? Just hang in there and use it for a while.
From the HN guidelines (at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) , "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) "