Recently, I've been looking at governance votes for a few protocols again.

Honestly, many people just "delegate" their votes and consider the task done, but in the end, how proposals actually pass still mostly depends on a few individuals or institutions making the final decision.
You could say governance tokens govern whom?
Maybe more accurately, they "govern" the time cost for small investors: if you don't read the proposals, you can only hand them over to others; even if you read them, you might not be able to stop the outcome.

Sometimes it feels quite similar to macroeconomic sentiment: everyone watching for rate cut expectations, the dollar index, risk assets all rising and falling together, lively discussions, but the real factors that determine the rhythm are just a few lines and a few hands.
Anyway, what I care more about now is: whether the delegatee has a clear conflict of interest, whether the voting reasons are human-readable, whether they can be revoked at any time...
Don’t let it end up just with the superficial prosperity of a "high voting rate."