Hey everyone!

I see a lot of people posting about how you shouldn't vote when your VP is low, because you're wasting your ability to impact rewards distribution.

But that just isn't so.

While voting when your power is low may mean that you have less versatility, you are still using all of your potential. Here's some math, with explanations.

The argument goes

(and I've seen this many places, but most recently here @taskmaster4450/pissing-away-hard-earned-steem-power-why - please don't think I mean any disrespect. We're all just trying to help new users) that when you keep voting at a low power, your votes are worth less, so you're not giving up to your full potential.

But here's why that isn't true.

When you vote, your voting power goes down, it does so in 2% increments (assuming you're using 100% voting strength for those of us with a slider - if you don't have a slider, don't worry, you'll get one someday!). But 2% of what?

2% of your current voting power.

Your voting power also goes up as time passes, up to 100%. It goes up continuously (not incrementally) by 20% per day. But 20% of what?

20% of your total possible voting power.

So, as you get closer and closer to zero, it takes more and more votes to reduce your voting power by 2% of your total voting power, but it always goes up at the same rate.

How does this work mathematically?

Let us set an arbitrary amount of time. We will begin this period at 100% voting power and end it at 100% voting power. Is there a voting method which makes it so that we have distributed more than any other voting method?

We can...

1. vote once every 2.4 hours exactly, thereby always voting with 100% vp
2. vote a whole bunch times in a few minutes, then wait for it to recharge and repeat
3. vote a whole bunch all the time (let's say once an hour), only waiting for it to recharge at the very end, when we need to meet the rules of 100% voting power at the very end.

Here's our test case scenario: a 100% vote is worth $1, and our arbitrarily chosen length of time is 10 days.

1. $110 votes/day10 days=$100
2. $1+.98+.9604...(lim->0) (Let's say 400 times all at once). Then wait 5 days (+20%VP/day) and repeat=$100
   This is more complicated, so here's a Link to a spreadsheet
3. $1+.98+.008333+... (see column d in the spreadsheet)

Here's where I release this post into the wild, and you can help me make clearer any points that aren't clear.

No matter your voting tactics, you are going to distribute the same amount of value.
You can give me any scenario, and I can figure out the math (it might be tedious) to show that you'll deliver the same rewards overall as any other scenario... as long as you don't leave your votes unvoted at 100%.