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Currently the votes are fixed after a particular time. One can't undo or upvote a post previously downvotted by him/her unless the post is edited.

So, say the question was edited by another person (misunderstand what the OP is asking) and the edit was rolled back by the OP, what happens to the alterations in votes during the time of edit?

  • The edit was not by OP - So are we allowed to change votes when someone other than OP edits the question?
  • The edit was rolled back - Will this undo the votes changed during the edited period (assuming there was a gap between the edit and the rollback)

Though I am not asserting anything, this can potentially cause a person to edit a question to remove his/her upvote or downvote. Especially if the person has sufficient reputation to directly edit the post

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You can change your vote after any modification to the post that you voted on, and this includes a rollback. A rollback is an edit, just an automatic one - the edit is just attributed to the user that initiated it.

It's not terribly uncommon for someone to:

  • Vote on a post
  • Not realize that they missed something after the 5 minute grace period expired
  • Edit (or waits for someone else to edit, e.g. the OP)
  • Changes their vote

So long as the edit involved isn't superfluous, there's not a big problem with this happening. There was probably a good reason for the misunderstanding in the first place, and an edit to correct that is a good edit. The surface for abuse in these cases is really small and easy to detect. Too many rollbacks and moderators get an automatic flag, though the community usually sees (and stops) this way before that.

You can change your vote after any edit because the post might no longer contain whatever caused you to vote for it. In a highly collaboratively-edited setting, it's essential to make sure that works, even at the cost of perhaps a dozen extremely narrow cases every six months or so.

Whenever someone speaks of rollbacks in a negative way, it's usually an 'edit war' afoot, and nothing really to do with voting.

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