Lots of people go to user settings and turn on "null vote" and your solution doesn't scale well for this (nor for possible future voting expansions -- adding more types of votes).

Update: Your update is better. I still don't like the space restriction/requirement. I've been wanting to move the "reply" link out of that column already. But then, moving that out might provide a way to separate articles more clearly and so facilitate moving the vote buttons to the bottom.

But it certainly isn't a priority for me. Despite having gotten two gods added, patches are currently getting written rather faster than they can be applied.

                - tye