Thanks for the response and links to the articles.
Votes are based on a timestamp, so a vote 1 minute ago has 120 seconds (or in this case, points) less than a vote of the same rating one minute from now.
It's a rating scale of 1 to 5, and instead of multiplying an entire timestamp amount by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5- which would make it almost impossible for articles to be ranked dynamically, if not fairly, each rating is separated by 12 hours (or 43200 seconds), so a 'four star rating' 2 hours ago equals a 'three star rating' 60 minutes ago, which is equal a 'two star rating' right now.
I chose not to add negative votes, similarly to hacker news where there is only one upvote option. If a user doesn't like something, he can simply skip it and move on to another article or link he or she likes. It cuts down on trolls who downvote everything with a "Ron Paul" topic, for example.
I appreciate the feedback about the appearance or lack thereof of rating features. I'll look into it.
Alan. (webmaster@ioncurr3nt.com)