That's a good question lol I don't use all my 30 votes, I know. Maybe just half of that.
I guess, if someone wanted to be sneaky, they would create multiple accounts and vote for themselves, however, someone who want to truly be a witness is someone who want to truly help the community. Someone who want to truly help the community, knows and understand how self voting in such a way would not benefit the blockchain system to which they wish to be contributing. And the honest ones are usually the most transparent witnesses in the community. I guess we just need to trust.
But that is scary, that it is possible currently with the circumstances that one could become a witness via buying steem power and just making accounts technically. The problem is.... you can't downvote. We couldn't even counter it aside from us all making sure everyone votes and makes extra bots for themselves for the politics. I hope that loophole is fixed or addressed? There needs to be a verification system that ensures it is just one HUMAN voting. By these regulations technically an alien could influence our STEEM blockchain :P but even so maybe I just don't understand, but hopefully it's dealt with
Yeah, I agree about there being a way to ensure only one human votes. Not sure if that is in the works or not.
I should hope
I don't even see proxies, like I know I have someone who made me their proxy but I only know cause they told me ?
another one, can low rep accounts still vote?
Yes, but their vote has much less weight. I'm not sure how it works if they vote for a witness, but I presume it's similar. Someone with low enough rep that they drop to below 25, then their comments are hidden, so their voting power means almost nothing.
So is it voting power that is being given or? That's the one thing I'm shaky on, are they receiving a portion of my Steem Power influence or something?
No, it's not like voting for someone's post and your voting power goes down each time you vote. It's a different voting system, but I think if your rep is below 25, it's as though you're not voting for them. Or something like that. Your vote simply means a vote and the witnesses with the most votes are the ones who are active on the platform and allocated a few extra things and such. I'm not sure on all the details but I do know the vote does not affect your voting power the same way. Besides, even if it did, you vote for a witness once and your vote remains permanent unless you change it.
That is what I thought and there are no tools to like check proxies or how many bots are voting for witnesses atm, so considering they start at 25 if you have empty accounts who just act as proxies it seems fairly easy to abuse
What they should do IMO is implement a Rep minimum to be able to vote for witnesses. So noone below Rep lvl 40 or something, can vote for a witness. I think it took until I hit lvl 40 to KNOW and understand a bit what a witness is and does anyway. That would add an extra layer to help weed out proxies at starting rep.
while that is good, it doesn't require much to get to 40 if you have an account with a strong upvote. I'm thinking worse case here this could be easily done by any whale and or have already been done