Things I've heard at various points which may or may not still be true:

- Votes by direct link don't really count. So you could see a high total but it's not the actual value being used for the rank.

- Many flags can penalize a post

- Voting rings are heavily penalized

I'm in favor of all of these things because they prevent the most obvious gaming schemes.

Edit: looking at your history (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=destraynor) it's clear you only submit your own stuff. No one will argue with people self-submitting stuff here and there, but only submitting your own posts? If the content was worthy, someone would post it and it would get enough votes to rise organically.