Here in Ontario we have a provincial election on June 7th. Since it falls on a Thursday and I’m sort of tied up on Thursdays, I voted at an advance poll yesterday.

We have three political parties recognized in the Provincial legislature but there are seven running in this riding. When I was handed my ballot I didn’t just see three candidates and have to write in one of the others if I wanted to vote for them. I saw all seven candidates. Pretty simple eh?

The Steemit Ballot is Different

When you go to the Steemit page to vote for witnesses, you are presented with a list of 50. If you want to vote for someone not in the top 50, you have to know who it is and write that name in. Since we’re voting on that page, what we’re looking at is a ballot.

So how come only part of the total candidates are presented? Even worse, how come not all of those presented are actually active candidates?

This has been the topic of discussion at the Witness Chats and in other conversations about the witnesses. At least one of the witnesses in the top 50 has been on record opposing changing that status quo. He’s argued that he made his way into the top 50 by getting out there, getting known and working his way up there.

Hate to have to point this out, but, a partial ballot wasn’t right when he was making his way up and it’s still not right. It’s not right for people who are trying to vote to not know who is active and who isn’t.

Effort Has Been Made in the Past to Change It

There was a ticket opened on the Condenser GitHub back in March 2017 asking that the then 69 witnesses be shown on the Steemit page and a setup that allowed for up to 100 witnesses to be created. The only response received was from Hive account@timcliff who opposed it and called Hive account@sneak to close the ticket, which he did.

New Effort is Underway

Two days ago Hive account@noisy reopened the matter and called for it to be revisited. He pointed out what many are already aware of, when a person gets into the top 50 their votes start to rise exponentially. Visibility does that.

He also brings up an interesting point. People from outside the platform who are familiar with the crypto world question why STEEM only has 50 nodes. That list of only 50 gives that impression when in fact there are over 100 active witnesses. If you follow Hive account@witnessupdate you’ll see there are currently 614 witnesses with 131 active.

While the previous effort to change the status quo had only the one response. This one has a conversation underway. You can read it here.

You Can Help

You can contribute and help to send the message to Steemit Inc that this is something the community wants addressed.

Hive account@dragosroua posted about this yesterday. He’s suggested if you are registered on GitHub to go there and register your support. If you aren’t, leave a comment on his post.

I’ll suggest leave a comment where ever you see this being discussed.

Speaking of Ballots, Have You Voted?

I have all 30 of my witness votes in place. Have you voted? A new initiative has been launched to encourage and reward members of the platform to vote.

Hive account@ivoted is a bot which will reward those who vote for witnesses. I’m not totally clear on how it is going to work, but I’ll support efforts to get the word out that people need to either vote or proxy their vote to someone they trust to make good choices.

Some have proxied their votes to me. If you’re unsure who you should vote for and aren’t about to spend the time researching who is who, feel free to name me as your proxy.

Next Witness Chat

What has become a monthly witness chat will take place in the Steemit Ramble Discord on Saturday, June 16th at 11am EDT / 1500 UTC. All witnesses are invited to attend along with members of the community to the discussion.