So, I wanted to research and write about another topic but yesterday I was challenged by a friend and I needed to make this post. Many steemians have written about Voting Power and some of the most helpful ones are to be found here by @scrooger or here by @felander
Official Steemit Frequently Asked Questions
In the steemit FAQs you can find the below important information:
Voting and Curating
What is my voting power?
Voting power is like an "energy bar" in a computer game that goes down a little bit every time you vote. You start out with 100% voting power. Every time you vote, you will use a small amount of your voting power.
As you use more of your voting power, your votes will carry less influence. A vote with 50% voting power left will be worth 1/2 as much as a vote cast with 100% voting power. Not to worry, the network recharges your voting power by 20% every day.
How many times can I vote without depleting my voting power?
Every 100% vote you cast will use 2% of your remaining voting power. Your voting power will recharge by 20% each day. You can vote more than 10 times per day, but each vote will be worth less, and it will take longer to reach full voting power again.
Casting a Vote
There are two three ways to cast a vote
(a) New users vote by 100%. Every time they upvote, a 2% of your Voting Power is consumed. So, with 10 votes you already have an 80% Voting Power remaining.
(b) Users that have more than 500 SP (Steem Power) have a bar, with which they can upvote using a bar selecting the percentage of vote they want to use. If for instance you select 50%, then you will consume 1% of your Voting Power
(c) Users that use busy.org independently of their Steem Power, they can assign the percentage of their vote.
In order to do that, visit the settings and enable the slider
What if I wish to vote more and go less than 80% Voting Power?
Why not? This is entirely your decision.
You should keep in mind that your Voting Power regenerates a 20% every 24hours.
Also, please note that you will
(a) Get less curation rewards and
(b) Your vote will have less value to the people you are upvoting.
Should I make discounts when I vote for content I love?
My reply is, that it entirely depends. I have seen good friends of mine at times to have 9% or 16% VP. I myself, have managed to go as low as 35% once! This can mean that for a little bit, you do not care about numbers .. so you just ...
spread votes & happiness like confetti ..
It is important that you know exactly what Voting Power is, how to control it and how long it takes to regenerate. From that moment on, the decision is absolutely Yours to take.
Is Voting Power connected with Bandwidth?
Absolutely Not. They are not connected to each other. SP is in your 'wallet section' and is how much Steem Power you have earned. VP is how much energy you have left and regenerates by 20% every 24h. Bandwidth depends on every action you perform in the block chain.
Read more about bandwidth
Where can I check my VP?
You can check the below tools and use whatever suits you more: