Thanks again for your thoughts! I just grabbed my MiSTer and my meter and the component cables that I'm using. The meter I have is just a basic one (this one, precisely: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12966)
I'm still pretty new to electronics, so forgive me if this isn't right: I set the meter to the 20V DC position and then put one of the probes on the outer ring of the green cable, the other probe on the tip. It's reading 3.2 with the Genesis core loaded, including a rom that just displays a sort of pinkish background, which makes it sync on my TV.
If I load the SNES core (no funny background colors; does not sync with my TV by default), then the same cable shows 2.67 to 2.68 with just the OSD open.
I wish you had an oscilloscope too! Haha.