Voting for witnesses on steem is really something that is very important but since it is not mandatory most people just do not do it.
They either choos not to do it or do not know they have a vote.

Which is a shame, it is a small chance you have to change the way the blockchain is run and governed.

A little while ago there was a big discussion going on in the ranks of witnesses and steemit inc to change the way this was done in a fairer way.

This improvement has finally come, so thanks @ned / @smooth / @andrarchy and the rest of Steemit Inc.

To vote for a witness the most common option was to:

go to the top right of the page if you are using Steemit.com and click on the three lines

then a menu opens like below:

then you can click on the vote for witness tab and you will be taken to another page and this is where most people actually voted.

Voting for a witness is something totally different then upvoting a blog. This is a sign of trust in someone that they will do the best to make this blockchain a better place. Everyone of you has 30 votes that can be cast for different witnesses

The Top 20 are the biggest ones there and they should in theory be the most trusted.

A good example from the community that someone is not trusted anymore is the fact that Jerry Banfield is no longer a top 20 witness.
He has tried to scam people out of their hard earned money or steem by claiming it was in the best interest for the blockchain. The best way to show that this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated is to revoke your vote for his witness. He is now fallen down to place 31 on the list and seems to be falling further.

This shows the power of the people...

Before the change it would have been a long and hard job to make it since it only featured the top 50 witnesses and all others were not shown. This has now been altered to the top 100.
But there is also another change in this list that I think is even more important. It shows the witnesses that are no longer active (and for how long) and this is crucial. Now people that find the list will no longer vote for inactive witnesses and as such they will hopefully slowly disappear from the list.

As you can see here there are several witnesses on this screenshot that have been out of commission for either a few hours or days or weeks. And once you get to an inactivity of weeks I would personally say someone does not deserve your vote anymore.

I am part of a team called @swisswitness and we are currently on place 116 so we do need a boost to make this new list. We have been slowly moving up the ranks and will hopefully with your help continue to do so.

With this new listing it is a different thing to be shown. We are not so far off and can really make it with your support.

So how do you vote for someone not in the top 100?

scroll all the way down the list and you will see this box:

There you just enter the name as shown below (not Felander but swisswitness) and press vote.

if you refresh your page it will show up in the list as seen below. I am currently voting for 4 witnesses not in the top 100 because they are good projects and deserve the support for what they are doing for the community like @yehey, @c0ff33a or @lux-witness
They are either doing a lot for the existing community or like me they are promoting steem off chain to get more users on board.

We are all doing this at a financial loss to ourselves (running 2 servers costs money) but do it because we believe in the potential of steem

another way to make it easier to vote for a witness is through steemconnect so you can just follow the link below:

https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=swisswitness&approve=1

or if you do not get all this witness stuff but trust that I do, you can proxy your vote to me through this link

https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-proxy?proxy=felander&approve=1