Nice job explaining the platform. If I understand correctly a new user has 10 (non-weighted) votes a day max. In other words if I go several days without voting, the votes are not cumulative. For example upon returning from several absent days, I just have the 10 votes. Once I deplete the votes, it takes 24 hours to get back the voting power. It appears that as you build your rep by adding value that your votes have a greater influence, and you can weight the votes effectively giving you more total votes.
I think the idea is to keep things organic with the goal of good content gaining the most influence. As a new user I wonder about several aspects, but as you said it is new technology and it is evolving. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
-Thanks for the post!
Well, your voting bar recharges 20% each day and 20% is 10 votes... So if you havent been on for a week you can cast 10 votes at full weight that will be recharged the next day, or 50 votes that will be recharged in 5. But each vote gets successively weaker..
Once your rep goes up, your vote will have a greater affect on others rep, and you get a slider controlling vote weight at about 500 Steem Power.