I remember when I first started visiting perlmonks, there were a few times that the voting system had bugs in it. Sometimes you would get extra or unlimited votes. Other times the vote count wouldn't reset the next day, so you would lose some votes.

As for your second point: If you want to double the votes you get to cast, all you have to do is gain 3 levels (you've already gained 5). I find that I have more then enough votes (possibly too many). Of course posting about the number of votes you have will lead to massive downvoting, making it harder to get to gain those 3 levels.