Hm yeah. I second that. My votes didn't have an effect on anything for a couple of months now, which is very disappointing when coming across good stories and comments. Voting degraded for me just to keep bookmarks around in my saved stories. :(
You can check yours here http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=flashingpumpkin
Your "26 point" comment would be discarded as an extreme. There's also a delay (a day?) til averages are recalculated, so your present "5 point" comment wouldn't be included yet.
You can check yours here http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=flashingpumpkin