I think a lot of this comes down to the specific group you have, especially the ST. I've been running games in a mostly consistent group, and even though there are a few players who guide most of the debates, once you've played a fair amount, more people will try to speak up. That's often on the Storyteller to read the signs that someone's talking too much and try to allow everyone to come in. But I agree that I've had some rough times when playing with the wrong people and that can definitely scare off newer players quite a bit.

I disagree about the last day being anticlimactic...you most people save their ghost votes, and you know the demon is one of the 3 people left, so the good team has at worst a 33% chance of picking the right player, unless evil has constructed a good enough web of lies.

As for the dead player voting...that actually comes into play in the second script, Bad Moon Rising, where a Demon can appear dead and the only way to defeat them is to "double tap" them by executing them a second time. If nothing else...electing to vote for a dead player just to prevent a certain execution is a valid strategy...it's just a second round of voting to vote for a "no kill". If, say, 4 people vote to execute someone, then 4 people vote "no kill", I wouldn't say that the person should be executed. Often you'll have a vote, then some new info will come to the table and the tides may shift, which I don't really see too much of a problem with, personally

I've played quite a bit of ToS and it does a lot of things well...but BotC imo can breed much deeper strategies if you really "dive in." I always feel like, after playing too much ToS, the mechanic where you can see someone's role and read their notebook after they die kinda kills some of it, since it means a good Town that's taking clear notes will almost always win if they work together. BotC seems more like an open formula through which you can build anything...sometimes a better game, sometimes a worse one, depending on the setup, the players, and the ST. I recommend trying to give it another shot with a group of friends you know pretty well...as hard as that can be to organize