Witness Flags - Should Witness Downvotes Exist?

I'd like to take a brief interlude in my witness series to ask a potentially controversial question:

Should we be able to downvote witnesses?

I decided to take a look at this topic having not formed much of a prior opinion. Truthfully, it's not something I've felt the need to use yet nor would I clamor for this feature personally. However, these are poor reasons to avoid giving the idea its due consideration.

The truth is, "negative" voting, or voting against rather than for, a candidate, is as old as democracy itself.

From the Belhaven University blog:

"Ancient Greece had one of the earliest forms of democracy, since at least 508 BC. Each year, the Greeks had a negative election — voters were asked to cast a vote for the politician they most wanted to exile for ten years. Votes were written on broken pots, ostraka in Greek, and from this name comes our present word to ostracize."

"If any politician received more than 6,000 votes then the one with the largest number was exiled. If no politician received 6,000 votes then all remained. If there was a fairly even spread of votes, nobody would get over 6,000 and no one would get exiled — hence only very unpopular politicians were ostracized and exiled."

As Hive account@dantheman eloquently points out in his series on "The Politics of Self-Voting", an economy needs to have the option of both up and downvotes to create a sustainable balance of incentives and power. From his post:

Allowing only upvotes is akin to only allowing those with a favorable opinion of an issue to express an opinion on that issue. It can be interpreted as a form of half-censorship of "negative" opinion.

What if there is a witness that a hypothetical voter has ideological differences with that cannot be resolved, and they wish to vote against the policies or style of that witness?

For example, for any with an ethical or faith-based objection to gambling, there would be a number of witnesses grossly unqualified to represent this voter. Whether or not a witness downvote draws from the same pool of 30 witness votes is immaterial to the main point. Should this voter not have the right to express their stake's share of voting power, whether that be to the affirmative or to the negative?

You have to admit, it's a much more rational option than this particular protest.

Is the "upvote-only" restriction on witnesses fundamentally arbitrary?

Would Steemit become more or less fair with witness downvoting? What other important issues are at stake?

If you have any additions or errata for this post, please let me know! I will see that they are voted to the top of the comments, and will make the appropriate edits (if possible).

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