Okay, here's my idea. Don't know if you guys will like it, but...
I was thinking that for each turn, a person could vote for TWO characters and also boot two. Voting would still be +1 and booting would still be -2. If someone doesn't want to vote for two different characters (or boot two different ones), they would only be able to vote for (or boot) one on that turn. This wouldn't change the action of the game much - it would just go faster - but it would make an interesting twist.
I haven't decided yet what characters to use in this one, but some are going to be from Super Mario Sunshine and Paper Mario 2.