I think the real issue of requiring comments on downvotes is that it would either disallow anonymous downvotes, or encourage anonymous comments. Perhaps de-anonymizing downvotes without requiring a comment might be a better first step: if you aren't brave enough to have your name associated with the downvote, then maybe you shouldn't be downvoting. I'm sure this would cause its own problems, but I suspect it would be a net positive. At times I think it might even be good to have all voting and flagging actions on HN to be public record.