RE: BSIP-0022 Draft - "Introducing expiring votes for Witnesses, Committie members & Proxies within the Bitshares network" (An elaboration/extension of Dan's BSIP-0005); Input would be massively appreciated!
As a voter, what is important to me is validating my identity, not necessarily all 20 votes I've placed in the past for various Witnesses, Committee Members, and Workers. As I read BSIP22, I was under the impressions that I'd have to re-vote for my specific proxies, or witnesses, etc, but this is a lot to ask of any user. I've casually mentioned this in the telegram channel, but I think adopting a voter registration system would be easier to implement and easier to execute.
Under this plan, my existing votes would remain in effect as long as I renewed my voters registration. This would serve the purpose of removing votes for accounts where the owner has died or lost their keys and no longer is able to cast a vote.
The implementation I'd envision wouldn't required a very advanced implementation. Each user account would need something like:
(user variable) voter_registration_expires: <datetime>
(global variable) voter_registration_graceperiod: <days>
As long as today < voter_registration_expires, the user's votes would remain in effect.
The global graceperiod value could be used to ensure that the registration could be renewed without a lapse. So, if your registration expires on 1/1/2018, you would be able to renew your registration anytime after 11/1/2017.
This would be a very simple implementation on the UI as well. The user could be presented with a badge and a single button that asks the user to renew their registration. Clicking the button renews it and all votes remain as cast.
The disadvantage to this approach is that doesn't require the user to re-consider their votes, they just click a button and all votes are renewed until the next cycle. While it's certainly easier from the perspective of user-experience it doesn't promote thoughtful engagement.
Consider that in Western democratic elections your pre-existing votes don't stand from election to election. As an individual you have to explicitly recast your ballot. This forces you to at least consider the other options available to you and if your last choice really remains appropriate going forward.
In the end, what needs to be achieved is the relinquishing of the stranglehold that a few select early adopters have on the evolution of the Bitshares system and while voter decay doesn't guarantee this, it does provide the two fold benefits of filtering inactive stake and forcing those remaining active users who delegate or vote with their stake, to take into consideration what they are voting for or whom they are delegating to.