You started the bounty and paid with your own points, so you can decide whichever answer it shall be awarded to.

There is no requirement or recommendation to award it to the accepted or highest voted answer - it just usually happens to be like that because all three are indicators of the most helpful answer.

An answer having few or no votes so far does not necessarily mean it is a bad answer either, it might just not have got much attention yet - maybe because it was posted much later than the question and/or many other answers. A single downvote is also nothing serious. Sometimes they're just from someone who had a bad day or misclicked without noticing - or Tim Post lost his keys again. Don't feel afraid to show appreciation for a post just because there might be some people who don't share it.

About your bounty possibly causing "balance downvotes", I'd not put too many thoughts on that either. While of course somebody might come by and do that, I believe chances of people seeing a bounty as indicator that someone who knows their stuff really liked this one, as intended, are much higher. Otherwise, following your argumentation, you must not upvote any single post because it might provoke downvotes too. Also upvotes and especially bounties are worth much more reputation than a downvote takes away, btw.

So yeah, it's your decision where it should go to, within the boundaries of SE rules. The only criteria I would consider are:

• It is not possible to award a bounty to your own answer.
• You shall not give the bounty based on who wrote an answer (equivalent to targeted voting, which can lead to moderating actions) but based on the quality of its content.
• You shall not give the bounty to an answer that is not suitable for the site and would otherwise deserve to get removed (i.e. anything that justifies post flags and deletion) - simply because we will still do that if necessary and then your points were in vain.

So much for the official part I can tell you as a moderator.

Now personally, I would not think of Dmitry's answer here as a good bounty candidate, as even though it answers the question in a basic way, it doesn't really give you much to continue with. "Because of that, you need special magic to [...]" is not really helpful IMHO. It is still a valid answer, but I would not consider it outstanding enough to deserve a bounty myself.

You started the bounty and paid with your own points, so you can decide whichever answer it shall be awarded to.

There is no requirement or recommendation to award it to the accepted or highest voted answer - it just usually happens to be like that because all three are indicators of the most helpful answer.

An answer having few or no votes so far does not necessarily mean it is a bad answer either, it might just not have got much attention yet - maybe because it was posted much later than the question and/or many other answers. A single downvote is also nothing serious. Sometimes they're just from someone who had a bad day or misclicked without noticing - or Tim Post lost his keys again. Don't feel afraid to show appreciation for a post just because there might be some people who don't share it.

About your bounty possibly causing "balance downvotes", I'd not put too many thoughts on that either. While of course somebody might come by and do that, I believe chances of people seeing a bounty as indicator that someone who knows their stuff really liked this one, as intended, are much higher. Otherwise, following your argumentation, you must not upvote any single post because it might provoke downvotes too. Also upvotes and especially bounties are worth much more reputation than a downvote takes away, btw.

So yeah, it's your decision where it should go to, within the boundaries of SE rules. The only criteria I would consider are:

• It is not possible to award a bounty to your own answer.
• You should not give the bounty based on who wrote an answer (equivalent to targeted voting, which can lead to moderating actions) but based on the quality of its content.
• You should not give the bounty to an answer that is not suitable for the site and would otherwise deserve to get removed (i.e. anything that justifies post flags and deletion) - simply because we will still do that if necessary and then your points were in vain.

So much for the official part I can tell you as a moderator.

Now personally, I would not think of Dmitry's answer here as a good bounty candidate, as even though it answers the question in a basic way, it doesn't really give you much to continue with. "Because of that, you need special magic to [...]" is not really helpful IMHO. It is still a valid answer, but I would not consider it outstanding enough to deserve a bounty myself.