I love the idea of putting the screws to short sellers....my Christian faith notwithstanding I have to admit that I am not immune to the sentiment called schadenfreude, the malicious enjoyment of another's misfortune.  

With that being said I recall about 3 years back (maybe 4) I instructed my broker to move, (I think it was 5,000) shares from my open account to an RSP (thus registered) account.  I remember it taking several days, longer than a week.  Shares in a Registered Account (RSP/TFSA) are not marginable and thus are not available to be shorted.  

I suspect that if Brokers were hit with a decent sized number of such moves...involving a signficant number of shares, I imagine they'd simply drag their heels waiting for things to balance out before complying with the requests. 

Years back I remember seeing "Certificate Calls"...or Cert Calls for short.  Investors were exhorted to contact their brokers to demand physical delivery of their share certificates.  I honestly don't think they ever amounted to much....typically they were for companies like Enron, Worldcom, Nortel and the like.  Ultimately stocks are about supply and demand....whether a compnay is garbage or gold, if buyers swamp sellers the price can explode regardless of fundamental realities.  

I make no pretense to having read everything on short selling, but I have read a lot.  And frankly I don't think there's much that can be done, even by a large group of retail investors.  

Here's a post from June of 2018 I did when RVX started showing up on the Buy-In list that time..

https://agoracom.com/ir/Resverlogix/forums/discussion/topics/709014-naked-short-selling-explained/messages/2195975

And if you want, take a look at what happened to the stock in the weeks and months that followed....it was pretty explosive.