I don’t understand your point. Registering as a dRep also needs a 500 ADA deposit. “Direct voters” are dReps, so they have to make that deposit. There is no “discrepancy”.
I don’t buy the argumentation of the gov.tools people that this reduces confusion, though. I have seen far more confusion arising from this invention.
That was the claim, yes. I have never seen much data to support this claim.
If the chain cannot handle if the people who are interested in its governance do one or two transactions per epoch to vote, then this chain has far bigger problems. There is no way that this can be more load then simply trading on Cardano which requires far more transactions than votes on occasional governance actions.
Ceterum censeo, I still think that the dRep concept is a horrible idea and should have never been implemented.