I'm going to assume you got into the Lyceum since it looks like you've been online at the same time as visible Heralds at this point (based on the character prays), but to address what you brought up:

1) The voucher system is designed to make sure people aren't going to use the Lyceum as a permanent safe haven or a battlefield. It's a place for people to read what other characters have contributed, and the vouching allows them to do that safely for X number of hours without trying to abuse the system.

2) I only see three recent prayers. Ishuli is right - typically only Herald IMMs address prayer requests for vouching because that's our responsibility and we don't want to put it on the rest of the staff. It's not about not having the ability, but we've all got our own things to do/focus on. I'm around a pretty good chunk of time so I don't think it's impossible.

3) There might be better ways to implement the system, but I don't see it changing if only for the simple fact that there's much more interesting/better ways to spend coder hours. If something changes in the future and exploring other options becomes more realistic/feasible, we can revisit it. Even then, I don't know how we'd do it without taking away the best part of the system: making people interact/engage with each other, because I think that's important to the game.