I agree. A few years ago I gave a talk in which I described a theoretical scheme called "zero knowledge proof of passport". The idea was to combine new zero knowledge SNARK algorithms with the digitally signed certificates that can be dumped from modern passports with Android phones to try and get closer to 1-(anonymous)-man-1-vote. The personal details on the passport would be anonymised using a salted hash function performed under ZKP. Of course, as an idea it has its own flaws (not everyone can get a passport, not everyone has Android phones, some people have access to lots of passports temporarily, etc).

Additionally, none of the zero knowledge proof systems on the market are fast/flexible enough to do it well. Perhaps if SGX were to be one day liberalised, it could work better. So it's not easily implementable today.

However, given that PoW definitely hasn't worked, people should have open minds to alternatives.

Even with the best protocol in the world though, you would still encounter this:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/02/12/chinas-role...

(the last sentence is especially telling)