Seriously, how much effort goes into voting? Perhaps an hour at the most?

If you only spend an hour on gathering information for voting, you probably shouldn't be voting: given that you probably don't have magical powers of common sense pointing inerrantly to the optimal choices, voting without research or some kind of insider information is pretty much equivalent to expressing a vote in favor of whatever random environmental biases you've been exposed to. That's a set that normally includes a lot of PAC influence, if you care about such things.

On the other hand, I'll admit that in some situations proposals do make their way to the ballot without being cleared of flaws or biases that're obvious to the average LW reader but not to the average voter. When I do choose to vote, my usual way of dealing with California ballot propositions (a form of referendum) that I've never heard of is to read the voter information pamphlet while I'm waiting in line and then vote against whatever option sounds frothy, knee-jerky, or economically insane. There are surprisingly few that don't have such an option.