#PreAuthorize and RoleHierarchyVoter - spring

Question

I am using role hierarchy in Spring Security as in my question. When I try to secure a method with #PreAuthorize("hasRole('ROLE_USER')"), I always got AccessDeniedException. However, if I change it to #Secured("ROLE_USER") or
<protect-pointcut
expression="execution(* my.package.Class.*(..))"
access="ROLE_GUEST" />
I have no issue. From this answer, both should behave the same except the listed differences. Am I missing something here?
Edit:
Here is my configuration.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/security http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-3.0.xsd">
<http entry-point-ref="entryPoint">
<anonymous enabled="false" />
</http>
<beans:bean id="entryPoint"
class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.Http403ForbiddenEntryPoint" />
<global-method-security secured-annotations="enabled"
pre-post-annotations="enabled" access-decision-manager-ref="accessDecisionManager">
<!-- this is disable if I secure with annotation #Secured -->
<protect-pointcut
expression="execution(* my.package.Class.*(..))"
access="ROLE_GUEST" />
</global-method-security>
<beans:bean id="accessDecisionManager"
class="org.springframework.security.access.vote.AffirmativeBased">
<beans:property name="decisionVoters">
<beans:list>
<beans:ref bean="roleHierarchyVoter" />
</beans:list>
</beans:property>
</beans:bean>
<beans:bean id="roleHierarchyVoter"
class="org.springframework.security.access.vote.RoleHierarchyVoter">
<beans:constructor-arg ref="roleHierarchy" />
</beans:bean>
<beans:bean id="roleHierarchy"
class="org.springframework.security.access.hierarchicalroles.RoleHierarchyImpl">
<beans:property name="hierarchy">
<beans:value>
ROLE_USER > ROLE_GUEST
</beans:value>
</beans:property>
</beans:bean>
<beans:bean id="userDetailsService"
class="org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.jdbc.JdbcDaoImpl">
<beans:property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
<beans:property name="enableGroups" value="true" />
<beans:property name="enableAuthorities" value="false" />
</beans:bean>
<authentication-manager>
<authentication-provider user-service-ref="userDetailsService">
</authentication-provider>
</authentication-manager>
</beans:beans>

Answer 1

I'm not so sure how your configuration looks like as you are referring to another post. The solution might be simple. Leave out access-decision-manager-ref as:
<sec:global-method-security
secured-annotations="enabled" pre-post-annotations="enabled" />
In practice, if Pre* / Post* annotations are being used for method security, a voter-based system is not really necessary. Actually there is no voter for that at all, so all other voters abstain and the access is denied.