What exactly happens when I vote on something?

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How does this affect what's in my wallet?

I came across a post by Hive account@rival asking for a simple explaination on how voting works on here. So I figured I could lay it out better in a post rather than a comment. If anyone finds they are lacking a guide on something...feel free to mention it in the comments. I'll get it added to my to-do list.

Q: What exactly happens when I vote for somebody on Steemit?

The short answer is that you show support for the content and/or the author of a post or comment.

The slightly more in depth answer is that you give them some money towards their payout. (I'll cover how much this is below.) On top of this, you can earn some money yourself with that is called curation rewards.

You'll never see a message saying "You've run out of votes," meaning you really can do this as much as you want. However, we do have a vote power percentage (I'll explain more below) that as it drops you give and receive (from curation) less money from your vote.

Q: Does my vote actually take money from my wallet to give it to others?

THIS IS THE BEAUTY OF STEEMIT...YOU PAY NOTHING TO PAY OTHERS!!

At least this is the short answer. But, unlike how you'd think of a tip...you don't have anything come from your wallet when you vote. Instead, your vote determines how much of the "Daily Reward Pool" is to be given towards that post or comment.

Yes, having new money printed each day does slightly effect what Steem/Steem Dollars we already hold, but let's just keep this simple.

Q: How much money do I give with my vote?

This is primarily determined by how much Steem Power you hold. That's why you see explanations for Steem Power referring to 'influence' on the site. The more you hold, the more your vote is worth.

I'll cover a few other pieces that can effect this voting below (but you don't have to get that in depth when explaining to others.)

Q: You said I earn some money from voting...how does this work?

When a post pays out (after 7 days) a cut up to 25% can be paid to the people who voted on it. Who gets what of this curator cut depends on how much their vote was worth, when they votes, and how many people voted before them.

I can provide more details on these parts if you want...but when explaining it simply to others, I'd just leave it here.

Q: You said I could vote as much as I want...but how much money I give (and get from curation rewards) goes down. How does this work? And keep it simple.

We all have a statistic called vote power percentage. Every time we cast a vote, this percentage goes down. However, it also regenerates at a rate of 20% per 24 hours (or about 1% an hours.) Those of us that like keeping their vote power high (I try to stay about 75%) try to vote less than 10 full votes per 24 hours.

Brand new users can only cast votes at 100%...it's pretty all or nothing. But once you reach about 500 Steem Power, you'll get a slider bar that lets you choose to give partial votes to people, meaning you give less, but can make more votes.

Let's break this down into a couple short examples.

Example 1: Effects on Vote Power %
Let's say your vote power % is at 100%.

Let's say you cast your 100% for somebody and it give $1.00. This makes your vote power percentage go down by 2% to 98%.
You then cast another 100% vote for someone else...it gives $0.98. Why? Because you're vote power percent was at 98%.
After casting these two Full votes, your vote power is at 96%...so the next full vote you cast gives $0.96 and so on.

If you stopped vote after the two votes, you would see your vote power regenerated back up to 100% in about 4 hours.

So you can vote as much as you want, but there is a limit to how much you can give with your votes.

Remember that ALL of my guide posts are eligible to be added as entries to the Steem Center Wiki or Operation Translation.

Click here to find out how these can earn you Steem!!

Feel free to ask me anything. I'm here to Help!

I've had slow response times lately, but I try to get a response to every question.

Are you new to Steemit and Looking for Answers? - Try https://www.steemithelp.net.

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❓ Answering Common Questions: How can I explain voting simply to others? ☑️