By the way, I am completely ignorant towards Steemits whitepaper! ... But any holder of Decred who can afford the ticket price will have a selection of votes to choose from. This "price" is not costing you anything. It just locks up the coins.

The DCRs are locked up in staking for 1-6 months, with a few percentages of profit. Right now, 35% of all Decred are staked.

A Couple of weeks ago, Decred successfully voted for Lightning Network, and also the implementation of a new algorithm for more stable ticket prices.

The next voting will be which privacy feature Decred will use. So you can choose between RingCT or zk-SNARKs
And by the way, the miners also have their say :)

How does Steemit do it with the Witnesses? I do not understand completely.