Is The Voting System Fair? Find Out For Yourselves!

Big G'DAY to everyone,

Wish to get into a few mind boggling topics here!

Yep, Witness stuff again, but more importantly as the old saying goes "THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE"!

Source

Voting for Witnesses on our Steem blockchain has become a very interesting topic since @shadowspub started the radio show The Witness Chat .

More and more posts can be seen popping up about who, what, how, when and where as far as Witnesses go!

So, to help maintain this momentum and ensure it doesn't die out like what many "Hot Topics" tend to do, here is a look at some facts and figures that should interest ALL Steemians!

First of all to ensure that we have a visual aid, I am going to be using a screen shot from steemreports.com.

Here it is:

What we have here is a chart showing who all voted for whom among the Top 50 witnesses.

To some this may all look a little confusing, so here goes.

On the left are the names of the Witnesses,
Next each of the names is a bar, made up of different colours.
Each of these colours represents one voter.
These votes are ordered highest MV (SP) to lowest MV (SP) with the last light blue portion being all the smaller SP votes.

I have gone to the liberty of typing in some of the numbers for the highest 5 voters and total of the small SP voters.

Why is it in MV (SP)?

Well, when you vote, your vote is weighed by the amount of SP you have. It is calculated in Mega Vests (MV) for the voting system.

Simple enough, "richest to poorest" voters from left to right! Simple as that!

or

"Most influential voters to least influential" from left to right!

Now that I have summed up what we see in the above chart for those who haven't seen this before, I can move on to the ever so lovely topics that we have all been able to see all over the place and read about in the last month or so!

One of our rather interesting and very active witnesses here, known as @sircork was working on a similar chart to the one we see above.

However his efforts were more so aimed at proving something that he and possibly many others suspect and that is collusion among some of the Witnesses.

Now, this is a strong term and none of us want to go around slandering anyone, so this is not going to be my topic here, although he did have some very interesting findings while doing his research of the statistics.

For those of you who are not familiar with the term "Collusion" here is the cold hard definition of it:

Collusion is an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal–but always secretive–to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage.

Source

What I wish to touch upon is the following part of that definition: "or gaining an unfair market advantage."

First of all, in order to fully explain it, we here have an option that was voted in by the TOP20 Witnesses, which we call "Proxy Votes".

What that means is that any one of us can give power of attorney aka "Proxy" in this case to anyone else for voting.

Imagine how all the democracies would fail if lets say people could do that, i.e. "I'm voting for all these people I know, because they said I could vote instead of them".

OK, but then again, we don't want to go down that road, or do we?
No, we'll leave that for another time.

Now, I'm not saying that there is "Collusion" happening here, hell if I were to say that then this post would be flagged from top to bottom and I would probably get to be the first person to have a -62 rating next ones name.

What I am going to say is that the so called "Proxy" option allows for collusion.

HOW?

Well, think about it, have a read of the definition above and then think about the options that proxy voting makes possible.

Here is one example:

A group of people get together and proxy one user account that does absolutely nothing on the blockchain, just sits there and serves as a voting tool.
They then use this combined voting power to influence Witnesses for whatever their agenda may be, good or bad.

This may seem rather unethical however it is possible.

Playing devils advocate here:

Well can't they do that exact same thing without "Proxy" votes?

YES THEY CAN.

and the funny part is that the "proxy" system has just made it a lot easier to see, that is all. That is if it is happening!

You can all go to the web page listed above with this chart, check out the names of the voters listed.

then after that go to a grand old page made by our fellow witness @drakos called Steemian.info and check to see who is voting for whom and who has proxy voting for whom.

Just sharing thoughts here, hoping to get people thinking for themselves on this very interesting topic!

When I was looking into it all I concentrated on the following part of the above chart:

Again, I am not accusing anyone of anything, just putting into question the idea of "Proxy" voting and what good it does. That is how it can be used to see potential collusion if it exists.

The next topic that I wish to touch upon is something that I have touched on before.

DEAD VOTERS!

Once again, an account that exists and that isn't being used is definitely DEAD.

Now, I won't dwell on the concept that Proof of Brain should be the core foundation to everything here, as it was argued that "investors" who use our wallet option and the safety of putting crypto (Steem) into Steem Power should have a right to vote.

Sure, just like in any free and democratic country out there, along comes a foreign investor who contributes nothing to the country and doesn't even live there, opens up a bank account and puts their money in there, yeah, they all have the right to vote.

Don't they?

Never mind, we'll leave that for another time too, as the topic I wish to touch upon is those "Dead voters".

Who by the way could very well be dead. After all they haven't even logged into their accounts for months, some even over a year now!

Yet they cast their votes and their votes are valid for infinity.

These are predominantly the ones shown in the light blue colour at the end of each chart.

Notice the value of their votes!

Yes, they are equal to and above that of the proxy vote that is in dark blue at the beginning of the chart (top left).

Now, I've spent a few days and hours looking into these voters.
Going to the site Steemian.info clicking on the little man like icon next to the Witness names, which opens up ALL the voters for the Witness it is next to and then scrolled down to the bottom of it and started opening up those accounts.

Man was that fun!

Well, guess what!

Many of these voters could very well be six foot under for all we know!

Haven't done anything for months!

Yet their votes are still valid and shall be for eternity!

Which again, confirms the need for a fair and reasonable time frame which each vote should be valid for. Considering the dynamics of our platform and all the new 3rd party apps coming on board, I would dare say that 120 days (4 months) is a maximum that any vote cast should be valid for.

With a little pop-up screen that shows up on our screen every time we log in within the last 30 days of that 120 days reminding us that our vote for Witness "@username" is about to expire soon.

Now, one of the people who were on the last radio Witness Chat claimed that "this can't be done".

I called out that claim by it's rightful name "BS" and stand by it.

Now, some smarty pants (don't wish to be crude here and call anyone an asshole) may respond to that and say "Well WHY DON'T YOU DO IT THEN".

Well I'm not the one making over quarter of a million dollars per year here!
Each and everyone of us can invest proportionally to our earnings.

That would be my response. If I was making a quarter mil per year here as a Witness, man, I would gladly pay a professional to fix the crap others have messed up!

oooops, maybe this isn't messed up, maybe it's like that because some people want it to be like that!

IDK, it kind of brings me back to that key applicable point in the definition of "collusion":

"or gaining an unfair market advantage."

Which now brings me to the third topic that I would like to address here:

The Witness Voting Page!

You know, the one on Steemit, which looks like this:

Nothing wrong with this page at first glance is there!

Except for the fact that we have many more active witnesses than these 50 listed.

&

The fact that it lists inactive witnesses too, yet one can't tell the difference.

Imagine going to a vote and not getting a full list of candidates, only the Top50, the other hundred or so, well, too bad so sad, you have to look them up elsewhere, because on your ballot list are only a handful of candidates.

Really fair isn't it!

Doesn't give anyone an 'unfair advantage' does it!

Another thing that this list doesn't show is the amount of people voting and unvoting a witness.

You, know like an arrow with a % figure of rise and fall per day.

If you are not sure what I am talking about, well, when you look at the crypto markets, you see a little green arrrow up and a green % figure showing how much a crypto has gained in that second or two or what ever, or a red arrow down and a % figure showing how much it went down!

i.e.

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Ohhh yeah sure, now someone might say "CAN'T BE DONE" and again I'll have to call it out for what it is "BS"

NO BULL, THERE ARE THOSE WHO WILL SAY "IT CAN'T BE DONE!"

Talk about "Mushroom politics" = Feed the people sh#t and keep them in the dark!

Yet we have a page put together called Steemian.info that proves IT CAN BE DONE!

We have numerous exchanges and crypto markets already out there, some even on their own blockchains, that show rise and fall of percentages on hundreds of various line items by the second.

& THEN WE HEAR THAT IT CAN'T BE DONE!

All this by those who are right up there and it all kind of gets me back to that one relevant key part of the definition of "collusion":

"or gaining an unfair market advantage."

Ohhh well, once gain, enough food for thought in one post.

Will leave everyone here with these few facts and figures, gave you the links to check on it all yourselves so don't blame me for the conclusions you come up with after looking into it.

Till the next time,

STEEM ON.

Yours truly,