The power up delay period is an idea worth discussing.
However, power down should still remain at least a week to prevent double voting.

There should also be some sort of slightly longer delay to cancel so pump and dumpers cannot bait people to powerdown.

This would at least solve something.

How about direct ability to upvote for Steem rewards, but slow and gradual ability to participate in voting for witnesses?

Direct engagement (important for on-boarding new users), but slow changes in power structures (not really important for minnows/new users, but comforting for investors and very good for security of the chain)

Let's avoid breaking things.

Makes a good bargaining chip,...
I liked the two year 160% inflation days,...

A viable variant of this idea is to delay governance influence of newly powered up stake.

In order to cut over, I could see keeping everyone who is currently powered up staying powered up.  Anyone who wants to power down should still have some limit like one or four weeks, to protect accounts from phishing attacks.

But after that, anyone who wants to power up has to prove they're in for the long haul, moving forward.

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Not nessisarily everything, one of the benefits of the system is that whales powering down is public knowledge. This gives less incentive for people to dump all of their stock.

Interesting. I like that you're thinking outside the box, and it certainly would have prevented this takeover from happening the way it did. But instant power down is a problem for account recovery - a stolen account would be drained instantly.