First of all: I don't abuse my powers and I (and most people) don't have inappropriate powers here anyway.

The point about votes on discussions is that it indicates the popularity of proposals (like yours here). (Update: this also means that PM discussions do indeed tend to attract more downvotes on average than the other categories, because many people here will vote down bad proposals to change the site, while most will ignore useless questions - for obvious reasons).

Sure if you propose something that's impopular you stand to lose some XP, but what the hell. Either you care enough to stand up for your ideas and try to convince people or you don't. It's not like you'll get banned or anything. Posting anonymously with a stupidly inflammatory title isn't going to help your cause anyway.

And yes, I do see your point about constructive criticism, but I don't think disabling voting on discussions will result in better proposals.

PS: For some reason most of the really down-voted proposals seem to be from people complaining about losing XP. Make of that what you will.