Well... you make good points and you ask the right questions. Good stuff. @nnnarvaez is doing fine work in there and beside me in YouAreHOPE. We have done work in seven countries now, but Venezuela is where it all began for me here and caused me to found YouAreHOPE in the first place.
I've helped thousands of users come on board here over the past 9 months and been a big part of many communities here in terms of educating people about what's going on here, so I can tell you that you are right, new users have no idea what is going on with the whole witness thing for sure.
To see who I, or anyone else votes for, look us up on steemdb.com or my preference, http://steemian.info/witnesses and click the menu option for witnesses->who votes and you can put in my name and see who I vote for, https://steemian.info/whovotes This information is available at a bunch of other different outlets too.