The "SIlent Majority" Argument is part of any MMO- related forum. But my opinion is that mostly such a thing does not exist. If going to the official forum to get your voice heard is too much of a hassle for you then frankly you do not really care if your voice is heard. If you go to the forums but do not vote then you do not care for the outcome of the vote.
And all the people for which this is true do NOT form some sort of group that should have any influence on how the outcome of a vote is valued. They don't care they don't count. As easy as that.
Fun fact though: The people swinging the "silent majority" like an axe ususally aren't even part of it. How could they? The silent majority per definition does not use the forums. Think about that! Usually it is people that just want to troll the creator of the poll or dislike it's outcome and want to talk it away.
Mind you all though: Of course PGI still should point out polls in the launcher news or even with an ingame notification that you have to OK-click away. And of course all I said above is less true if a poll is just badly phrased or biased or does miss legitimate voting option (most often it misses the "I do not care either way" option).
Speaking about the OP's idea: You shouldn't have to lure players into voting by handing out rewards. Either they care what goes on with the game and want to use whatever influence they are given by Russ and Crew or they just don't, then simply forget about them since they obviously aren't worth worrying about, when talking about Dev-polls and their outcome.
Edited by Jason Parker, 25 September 2014 - 02:20 AM.