I voted to close this question as a duplicate of this earlier question (now deleted, after being closed as off-topic and voted down to -6), so did one other user. The author of both questions deleted the earlier one, and now the later question has gone from two close votes to zero. This makes a certain amount of sense (it's no longer a duplicate), but I can't cast another vote even though my original vote is gone. This is troubling for a few reasons:
- The original post was closed as off-topic; I can no longer cast a close vote against the new post as off-topic, even though it's a duplicate of an off-topic question (my close vote is effectively lost)
- Users can abuse this to swallow a certain number of close votes while spamming the same question into the system (as has just unintentionally happened with the above two questions)
Is this a feature or a bug? Was my close vote supposed to vanish, and afterwards am I supposed to be unable to cast a second close vote for the next-best reason?
