Sort:  

The whitelist uses the voting mechanism to approve/reject projects on the whitelist, multiple rules have been voted upon like mandatory requirements.

On chain governance is not perfect yet, but it is there and is a good beginning. One of the things that would improve it is broader participation / coin ownership.

Some silly polls do not change that and, who knows, might be more important than we can see. Good example is Dogecoin built on jokes.

Well, technically speaking yeah, it 'costs money' to vote, but only like 1/1000th of 1 Gridcoin. That's pretty miniscule. (I'm assuming that's the cost you're talking about.)