Are down votes on closed questions reclaimed?

Question

Sometimes I need to down vote a question because it is inappropriate or misconceived or just plain off-the-wall. When I do this I will also initiate a close vote.

I have had the understanding that, upon question closure, down votes are automatically removed from my transcript. But now I am wondering if this is the case. Preserving a person's down votes for something that does not exist anymore seems out-of-whack to me.

What happens to the down votes if a question is closed? Or alternatively, is there another point where down votes are removed from the voter's transcript?

Answer 1

You get your points back if the question is deleted not if it's closed.

•Reputation changes from bounties and votes (both up and down) on deleted posts (including answers to a deleted question) are nullified. (Exception: Reputation earned for posts with a score of three or higher, and where the post has been visible on the site for at least 60 days, is retained). - How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion?

That aside, I rarely find any overlap between "questions that should be closed" and "questions that should be downvoted". The possible exception would be a lazy no-research question that you can shoehorn into a close reason that really means "if you're not going to try neither are we." But why should I downvote a recipe request? It's offtopic on travel, but I don't need to downvote it, just close it. Similarly a dupe - in fact I've given upvotes to dupes if I think their wording makes for a great signpost over to the original. Unclear what you're asking? I would only downvote if I could be sure I'd come back and undo it after an edit, and I'm really not sure I ever would, so I settle for closing.