Just from experience in a small sub with downvotes disabled by style default (as in AH)--if you're on desktop with RES installed, it's really easy to downvote by accident and without noticing.

I heard on a similar thread in another subreddit that some people turn on the option to hide threads they vote on, and then upvote/downvote each submission as they see it so new threads can show up. So, maybe that?

^(And is this the one time I can make an /r/AskHistorians comment with such a poorly-cited source? ;)^)

I mean it's possible (even though that's like, extremely petty). If you find your question suddenly buried for no good reason, you can always just repost within a day. I also see what I'd like to name "guilt pressure" wording (nothing against it btw) where people mention they are reposting this for the second/third/last time because they did not get an answer and it seems to be working pretty well:). And of course, there's the Sunday Digest, where you could post it again or the question could be scooped up by myself when looking for interesting questions without an answer. I wouldn't worry about downvotes all that much - the amount of times I got downvoted for saying "thank you, awesome answer!" is kinda crazy. Plus there's the whole vote fuzzing thing on Reddit.