I am not that active on MathOverflow but I notice that almost every off-topic question is closed within an hour. Why is a flag (if you lack of reputation) or a close vote (and in both cases a comment) not enough and there is a need of a downvote?
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12$\begingroup$ There are reasons for down voting a closed question. Here are a few: 1. Expressing that the question was completely off-topic or severely suffers from other issues. 2. IIRC, automatic deletion system deletes closed questions with negative net vote faster than those with zero net vote. 3. Questions below -3 net vote are not displayed on the front page so it can be a way of making sure that completely off-topic question do not clutter the front page. However, in general users down vote very infrequently on MO and what Asaf wrote is the reason for closed questions having one down vote. $\endgroup$– KavehCommented Jul 17, 2013 at 7:46
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There is an automatic downvote given by the system to questions which are closed as off topic.
answered Jul 17, 2013 at 7:32
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$\begingroup$ ah ok mistery solved. Thanks :) $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 8:52
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2$\begingroup$ Interesting, I did not know about this. Here is a relevant meta.SO post: Should questions closed as “not a real question” and “off topic” get an automatic downvote?. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 9:02
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3$\begingroup$ By the way, if there is an automatic downvote when the question is closed, is this downvote reversed after the question got reopened? $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 18:55
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$\begingroup$ @Dominic: I think so, but I don't know really. $\endgroup$– Asaf Karagila ModCommented Jul 17, 2013 at 19:02
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1$\begingroup$ There's also such a thing as both up-voting a question and voting to close it. I think I've done that in cases where the question is a duplicate. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 15:43