Crazy! Just before i read this post, i was allocated an additional 20 votes. The only screwy thing that i was doing at the time was trying to turn off the CPAN nodelet via Raw User Settings, which i notice will cause the site to hang a bit while loading . . .

UPDATE (3 mins later . . .)
And then they went away. Well, i guess this solves the case of the phantom votes (/me turns up a flask and empties it).

jeffa