Free votes are designed to expand voting access to users who don't have enough reputation points to earn the standard voting privileges (15 rep for upvoting and 125 rep for downvoting).
Free votes do not contribute to reputation; no post author will gain or lose rep because of a free vote received on one of their posts. However, they do still contribute to post scores.
My post got upvoted, why didn’t my rep increase?
If your rep did not increase after receiving an upvote on your post, that likely means that the vote you received was a free vote. Though it may be frustrating not to receive the reputation increase that you might have expected to, expanded voting access will most likely result in more votes being cast overall on the site, which is beneficial to post authors.
Why did I lose 1 rep by using my free votes?
Casting a downvote on an answer with a free vote costs 1 reputation point, like it does for all users with the ability to downvote, to discourage targeted or abusive downvoting behavior. No user can have a rep lower than 1, so if your reputation is 1 you will not be able to use free votes to downvote an answer. Casting an upvote never costs any reputation points, and neither does downvoting a question post.
To gain unlimited voting privileges you can start earning reputation points.
What are the different types of votes and how do they impact reputation?
| Reputation of voter | Type of vote | Rep impact for post author | Rep impact for voter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-14 | Free upvote | 0 rep | 0 rep |
| 2-14 | Free downvote | 0 rep | Answer: -1 rep / Question: 0 rep |
| 15-124 | Standard upvote | +10 rep | 0 rep |
| 15-124 | Free downvote | 0 rep | Answer: -1 rep / Question: 0 rep |
| 125+ | Standard upvote | +10 rep | 0 rep |
| 125+ | Standard downvote | -2 rep | Answer: -1 rep / Question: 0 rep |