Ask HN: Is flagging a story the same as down voting it?

several times over the past week i've been wanting to down vote some of the stories that have made the front page for various reason. i read in the faq that you should only flag a story if it goes against HN guidelines. the faq states that while there are down vote arrows on comment (after the user reaching a certain threshold) there are never any on stories themselves.

so after all of that, my question is: how do you exactly down vote a story on HN without feeling icky cause you flagged it?