Here's an fun example: 7 out of 9 of the states that were prohibited from changing their voting laws under the VRA of 1965 immediately passed restrictive laws once the VRA was gutted.
Here's a question that I'm not sure you can answer publicly: Ideally, support for voting should be non-partisan, and everyone seems to want to operate on that principle (including Vote.org).
But what if it is a partisan issue? What if the most important problem is that one party truly opposes voter turnout? Personally, I think that's the case, and I think our failure to address the real problem, for whatever idealistic reasons, is the primary reason we make so little progress.
I also have one friend who always casts a blank ballot, as a matter o principle.
Well now you have.
Your view is also terribly naive. If you get your way, what prevents the "shenanigans" from simply moving to another part of the process, say before the vote? Also, I would simply turn in a blank or random ballot because playing along with the sham of legitimizing the outcomes of questions where there is no choice is not tenable: do we stop secret balloting to prevent my antics? Do we evaluate the votes I make to determine whether or not I'm being a good citizen?
The big lie of much of "democracy" is, as a magician once put it, "When I cut the cards, I let you glimpse a few different faces. You conclude the deck contains 52 different cards (No. 1—Pattern recognition). You think you’ve made a choice, just as when you choose between two candidates preselected by entrenched political parties (No. 7—Choice is not freedom)."
Your proposal simply puts the threat of force to those that would not otherwise play the charade.
History of man shows many effective ways of influencing governing systems on many different levels, some more violent than others… and with modern technology ways people could only imagine of in the distant past are possible (beyond the present skinner box of political theater most elections are, and arguably to some degree or another, have always been), of which most people (forget about those who even show up to a voting booth) will never be interested/knowledgeable on/have direct means to do anything about.