Thanks for your response.
No, I don't think so. As I said in my post, there are services out there today giving out free EOS accounts. If they needed more RAM or CPU or something in order to use the account, that could also be solved relatively easily via delegations. If the post wasn't clear, no EOSDAC tokens would be needed at all. That's just an example of what we've built already.
The voting system only allows for 5 votes, so the 12 model isn't so easy to control. Having more than 12 means nothing will get done. The whole point of a board is to take action based on the input of those who support them. Larger groups have trouble taking action.
You only have to vote once, not every 7 days. The 7 day period is just when the votes are tallied. I edited the post to include an extra note to clarify that. Most steem accounts are not "real" accounts, so it doesn't surprise me that many do not vote as many don't have Steem Power anyway. This governance opportunity would essentially just be for those who care (just like not everyone shows up to HOA meetings).
Steem does not provide smart contracts. Dan wanted to build them here but had issues with Ned and so it never happened. I don't see how this could all be done without smart contracts, but I did have an interesting conversation with @roelandp about using custom_json to accomplish something similar, so maybe it's possible, but it seems to risky to me given the money that would flow through this.
This document wasn't written for a general audience, so I probably should have made that clear. This is for those who are actively building governance systems with blockchain code and want to explore alternatives. The protocols used to post your comment are incredibly complex from TCP/IP to encryption to API endpoints talking to nodes which interact with the blockchain. The point of doing it right is that all that complexity is hidden away from the user so things just work. If you click through to the eosDAC member client, you'll see it's a nice experience for the user.