Isn't it that if you make a choice between several options/alternatives, you need to understand these options' characteristics and implications for yourself and for others? And isn't it that for this both intellectual functionality and transparent information are necessary, inevitable preconditions?
Isn't it that elections are not the goal and holy grail of democracy, but just a
tool trying to acchieve democracy's real internal utopia? I think many people are extremely vulnerable to especially confusing these two.
Do fishes in a big swarm, swimming in perfect synchronicity, practice a "choice" in the widest meaning when deciding whether to swim left, straight or right in this very moment? And I see many similiarities in the behavior of voting masses, and swarm "intelligence". Predators have learned to manipulate the behavior of the whole swarm (for example to keep it together or to surface). So it is with "public opinion", "new press" and "new media", politicians, and the anonymous tyranny of political correctness and opinion conformity.
Making a choice is not a right imo, but a capability, and it has several inevitable preconditions that miust be fulfilled in order to be of value, and making a difference. For democracy, such preconditions are an understanding for background processes, and education; an awareness fore longterm dimensions and how the single person'S interest collides or collides not with the overall interest of the higher community. And as I argued earlier in other threads, community size to me seems to be one of the most important factors influencing the effectiveness of democratic principles working - the bigger the community, the smaller the chance for full understanding by the individual, for transparency and fact-based decision making instead of decisioons formed by simple habits.
Votring by habit is not what democratic elections are about. For that, influencing the pltical going of a whole community simply is too important as if any community can afford to leave it to that.
Four weeks ago, I got letter again, there is something that is called "Sozialwahlen", certain gremiums are getting voted for that have a supervising function over parts of the social security system. Not a single peson or name on the lists is known by most, incluzding me. I could throw a dice or a coin - but is that what democratic elections are about?
What I think on elections over political parties on federal and national level, I have said in earlier threads.
What is said in the textbooks about how it is meant and what it should be like, is one thing. But reality - is totally different. The theory of de,mocracy in our modern time with our modern social communities to me seems to be as dysfunctional as is the theory of ideal capitalism or the theory of ideal classic economy theory or as the theory of ideal communism.
In the end, all this is just a variation of a theme that has surfaced repeatedly in the past mon ths in thios forum: the controvery I had with some others over total, unlimited freedom and necessarily limited freedom, and total tolerance versus tolerance that is intolerant of the intolerant.
Freedom to choose is not so much just a right - riding this prinmciples hill up, hill down, leads you nowhere but into distortions. Freedom to choose is a skill, an ability. It depends of actual choices being avaiulable (with the choices being diferent to each other indeed), and your ability to see the difference between them, and the longterm consequences. People not being able to deliver in this regard, shall notr be given the right to influence and maybe mess up the fate of all. For that reason we do not allow little children to vote. For that reason I think we shall, not allow very old people with already present intellectual handicaps to vote (like we also do not let them drive cars, etc.). Education and information is what it is about, and intellectual capacity to process these. And here, not all people are the same. Not at all.
If people cannot step beyond themselves, and think beyong themselves and take into account the factors I mentioned, they should indeed not be allowed to vote. Not in violation of democracy, but actually to give back some meaning to "democracy". Acting by habit, or by throwing a coin, or by instinct or trained behavior, everybody can. You then can even let doves in laboratories vote for parliament. But then it would not make a difference between democratically elected regimes, and regimes that are simply put on top off you.
Is this really what democracy is about?
I am convinced that somehow we need to learn to think beyond democracy. I have no solutiun, but I still can state that like I can state that a claimed false solution for a complex mathematical formula is wrong - by showin g it to be wrong. You can falsify a wrong result even if you do not know the correct result.-
See all this also a bit in the light of that essay 14 months ago,
where I summarised Jared Diamond about how we can make suicidal decisions about our fate and future - on the basis of maximum reasonability and well intention and good argument.