Image Source
This great thumbnail was created by a fellow Steemian 
Introduction
The Steem community has often voiced the concern that there isn't enough participation in the witness voting process by new and currently active Steemians. This is an important part of the Steem ecosystem that is integral to the safety and robustness of the Steem platform, and it should be improved in order to help Steem grow and reach new milestones.
Proposal
I propose that there is a financial reward/incentive for Steemians to participate in the witness selection process whereby the voters would receive anywhere from 0.1% to 5% (or more) of the witness' witness category post rewards as beneficiary payout rewards.
This proposal also involves adding the following extra columns to the https://steemit.com/~witnesses page:
Short witness biography and information with link to the witness' main blog page
Witness server and seed server specifications
Witness price feed info and missed blocks statistics
Witness Github contribution history
Witness' witness category post history and associated post rewards
Example
Bob is a Steem witness that operates a witness and a seed node, and contributes regularly on Github and on posts witness updates as well as personal posts on the Steem platform.
Alice is a new Steemian that wishes to grow her blogging business and decided to join Steem and make it her primary content creation and distribution platform. Alice would also like to support the Steem platform by voting for witnesses that contribute to the platform. She would then look at the https://steemit.com/~witnesses page and see all of the existing witnesses' information, but also their respective server specifications, their Github contributions and their posts as well as the post rewards associated with their witness posts.
Alice would then select up to 30 witnesses that she would like to support with her vote and would receive the associated witness post rewards beneficiary payouts.
Benefits
The benefits of this proposal are primarily twofold:
To increase the witness voting participation on behalf of the Steem community
To make sure that the active and contributing Steem witnesses are being recognized and rewarded by the community
Conclusion
This proposal would go a long way to increase the participation of Steemians in the witness selection process, and help the platform to grow sustainably and efficiently by incentivizing Steemians to support the consistently contributing Steem witnesses.
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors