Storm Rider; the central problem of democracy is “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” Thomas Jefferson

It simply isn’t true. Some people are inferior to others, by any yardstick one cares to name. And thus people who have no capacity whatsoever to really understand the issues they are voting about have an equal right to those who have; and thus politicians get into power by promising “bread and circuses” or, to put it another way, by bribing the voters with their own money.

I may be paraphrasing this: “No democracy long survives the discovery by the electorate that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury”.

No, I don’t have an answer to this problem. Perhaps qualification requirements for voting, of which the best I’ve seen is Heinlein’s.