Steem governance is similar in many ways to the one of a representative democracy, where witnesses are the voted representatives. If you live in a democracy, you kinda know how this works: you vote your representatives and they should do their job in the political arena according to their duties and promises, to represent you who have other things to do.
Well, we know things don't really go so smoothly, and maybe that's a reason why people are reticent to cast votes for witnesses of the Steem blockchain, if they already understand what a witness does.
Without witnesses the Steem blockchain simply stops working, so they, collectively, not individually, are a critical component of this blockchain. Just like I don't know yet a working society without a political class, not particular politicians, as fed up as we might be sometimes by their doings.
Vote for witnesses on Steem is optional, not mandatory. Just as in political elections, we shouldn't expect everyone to vote, that's an utopia. But we can thrive to improve the number of voters, or since there is a big difference, the total amount of stake that is involved in approving witnesses.
Votes for witnesses are stake-weighted, which makes a whale's vote count much more than a minnow's.
Here's the thing: if the witness vote would be one-account-one-vote, without verification of individuality, top witnesses would be involved in a war "who creates the most fake accounts to vote for them".
So yes, money talks, and accounts with big wallets will have a higher influence. To me, that's something to aspire for, to have more influence, it shouldn't be given away as an initial right, just to be abused. Although I'm a minnow and I would like more influence, I think this certainly is better than the alternative described above.
Voting for witnesses is very simple, and it can be done at any moment from the steemit.com/~witnesses page (not like political election, on term). A casted vote can also be withdrawn at any moment the same way it was delivered (by clicking on the witness' name you want to disapprove).
The problem isn't really how to vote for witnesses. There are plenty of tutorials for that, and it's very easy. The problem is knowing who to vote for. And that puzzles many.
There are actually two responsible ways to do this, I think. Either
- vote for witnesses as you begin to know them and approve of how they work, what they stand for, etc., and revise your votes from time to time, or
- delegate this responsibility to someone who will do that.
I have chosen the first path for my account and the second path for my test account. My test account will simply copy all my votes for witnesses.
If you really don't want to bother about witnesses, it's easy to delegate this responsibility. Or as it's called on Steem, to set a proxy.
On the witnesses page, at the end of the page you'll see this form:
As you can see in the description of the form, choosing a proxy will automatically clear any votes you previously gave for any witnesses. You also won't be able to manually vote for witnesses or even see the witnesses list before you clear the proxy. Don't worry, that's just pushing a button.
To set the proxy, you just enter its account name and click Set Proxy. You will be asked for your active key to complete this operation, if you are logged in with the posting key.
I also took a screenshot from my test account, of the way the form looks after you set the proxy:
The form description pretty much says it all. Nothing complicated.
If you haven't manually voted for witnesses yourself yet, or you just want to post and leave someone else the choice of them, you can set that person's account as proxy. You don't need their approval or anything to do that.
The proxy account doesn't need any sort of access to yours. When the proxy vote is casted, it will simply vote using its own Steem Power plus yours (but you keep your Steem Power intact, this is not delegation).