There is already a total count of up- and downvotes, but please never add karma to Lemmy. We don’t want to deal with karma farmers and minimal karma requirements to post. I don’t care about the moderation issues because karma brought more harm than good. Please never add that bloody dreadful thing to Lemmy. I already saw a bunch of people supporting adding karma to Lemmy, which will turn Lemmy into a cheap Reddit clone and karma-farming hell. Please, never add karma to Lemmy. I beg you. No more karma hell.
I think the fact you said you don’t care about moderation issues kind of shows the disconnect. On reddit, karma was a crucial way to moderate. I think something similar is a good idea for federated replacements.
That’s also part of why votes need to be public, because how else would you know an instance wasn’t inflating it’s numbers. And the total number of votes would always need to at least be accessible on the backend to order properly. We can’t just get rid of these parts and still keep core functionality working. Sure this can be hidden from the user, but it’s not feasible to throw out.
Edit: I want to clarify that I’m open to suggestions. Please respond with how you think the system could avoid abuse and keep post ordering without a way of auditing/accounting for votes. I haven’t been able to think of one personally.