There are two main purposes of booting: player doesn't submit orders in given time or leaves the game/WL.
In the first case it's sometimes because he was unable to do so in given time (hardware failure, power cut, whatever) but then he goes back to WL just to see he'd been booted and can't play any more.
So, how about "soft-boot" mode? In soft boot player which doesn't submit his orders is replaced by AI for that one turn only. Then there's another full time turn when player can go back and continue his game. However if player leaves game that would cause game delaying so to prevent it there would be at most two full time turns waiting for player, then AI'd start issuing orders immediately but player still could go back at any time and press "I'm back 'n alive, let me finish my game".
Please vote on http://uservoice.com/a/43nyL

hasn't an idea similar to this already been posted on uservoice?

I haven't found one.

I like this idea. I think the whole booting process has a few things that need tweaking. I would love to see something on team games where more than one person has to elect to boot, maybe 1 person from each team. Also removing the boot option from players who have played less than X amount of games.

VTB is highly overrated anyways..
personally I support making VTB and VTE majority rules.. maybe 60-70%

What are VTB and VTE?

Vote to Boot and Vote to End

I see, thanks. I agree with Perrin3088 in that case.

I see you went ahead and made a new UserVoice option for this, and didn't bother to even look for existing ones.

This is exactly the same:
http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1399961-a-solution-to-boot-problems?ref=title

This is very similar:
http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1440475-players-able-to-rejoin-a-game-after-theyre-booted-?ref=title

And this is along the same lines:
http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1240763-teammate-takes-over-for-booted-surrendered-player?ref=title

Way to go, this is why UserVoice doesn't work.

Sure I was too lazy to use search feature as well as I was too lazy to start a new forum thread to let people know about my idea which I was too lazy to describe in UserVoice.

I'm sorry your UserVoice idea did gain nothing but 1 vote but go on UserVoice page and type&search "boot" or "booting". None of those returns your thread so don't blame me for not describing your ideas properly - I can't know about them telepathically although I'd want to since they are good ones (after all one of those is identical to mine).