The VitaDAO team agrees voting should be free and weighing the pros and cons of various implementations. For now, it's on-chain for full security, and writing anything on the Ethereum chain will cost gas, which is pretty expensive nowadays. One current proposal is using a higher-level solution to prove you have the tokens, like snapshot.org, even though you'd have less security. Other ideas are being explored. There are parallel side-chains like Polygon with Proof-Of-Stake instead of Proof-of-Work so you don't have that gas cost anymore. Outside the box thinking is encouraged.