I assume this book is largely about American voters? I'd counter that democracies with a hyper-informed and engaged electorate absolutely exist in the world, even if it's just on the local level or just with regard to specific issues.

Also, while a highly educated person might have a much better understanding of foreign affairs, they may have a poor understanding of what it feels like to come home to a decrepit apartment just to watch your children get skinnier. Even though they might be more informed and have better solutions for the problems they care about, they'll prioritize different issues.

If the average voter is poorly informed, the obvious solution to me would be to work on that issue directly, not on chipping away at what little power they have.

It's kind of counter-intuitive, but getting people to turn up to elections is often the first step in getting them to build informed opinions, read up on issues, and take their civic duty seriously. This is what people are hoping for when they try to improve voter turnout; they believe that many of our society's ills could be helped by fostering a more civically engaged populace.

That book uses many American examples, but it is fairly representative of most western democracies. That specific book is actually about ways to improve electoral results (while abandoning some traditional notions of democracy). There are many other books which discuss voter ignorance, and you can take your pick, any of them will give you the same idea.

>"If the average voter is poorly informed, the obvious solution to me would be to work on that issue directly, not on chipping away at what little power they have."

If someone is capable of doing a great deal of damage, the first step is to limit that damage, before teaching them how to do things properly. Educate the marginal and non-voters before you let them wreak havoc on an already troubled system.

>"It's kind of counter-intuitive, but getting people to turn up to elections is often the first step in getting them to build informed opinions, read up on issues, and take their civic duty seriously."

This is actually a variant of one of the first philosophical cases for democracy (though I can't remember who originally made that argument); the only problem is that it isn't true. Just read some of the books on voter ignorance, and you'll see exactly how wrong it is.

Here's a paper that provides evidence that voters are more informed when they have more political power: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=316694

It is true if we assume that the point of democracy is to assert collective preferences. We can hope those preferences are informed--indeed, that sounds lovely--but this is not strictly necessary. And under the model that democracy is a collective assertion of preference, having more preference data is a good thing. Informing people is a task left to society, not to the voting system.

Well, if you're a 'democratic fundamentalist', and think that more voting is better, no matter the consequences, then sure, you're right. On the other hand, I think voting is an instrument whose value depends on its results, and that it can be misused.

Okay, but isn't the point that there's no objective way to evaluate those results? If you're limiting people's voting rights in order to get the results you want, then of course you will think less voting is better. It's the political equivalent of begging the question.

The point of democracy is to trust people to be able to make those decisions, and give them the tools to hold their leaders accountable.

I have preferred results, but I can accept a range of democratic outcomes that I see as reasonable. I think most other people take the same view; those 'get out the vote' campaigns are usually targeted towards demographics with predictable preferences, so they're also results-oriented.

I'd rather that electoral outcomes reflect what people would vote for if they were well-informed (which is what the cited book is about). You can predict how more information and understanding would impact voting trends (there are various techniques for this), and the results are not that everyone agrees on everything, but the impact would be an improvement (in my opinion).

you don't have to have perfect information spread throughout a population to make good collective decisions amongst it. it's ok if much of the electorate is somewhat ignorant or poorly informed, as long as that's relatively uncorrelated (i.e., there's no systemic coercion of choice). but that's exactly what parties are designed to subvert to their advantage. so then, what we need to do is to do everything we can to move away from party politics, including better voting mechanisms and removing the outsized influence of money in politics.

The problem isn't systematic coercion of choice, it's widespread popular biases and a general lack of knowledge. If you are interested in improving democratic outcomes, you need to understand the individuals you're encouraging to vote.

> "The problem isn't systematic coercion of choice, it's widespread popular biases..."

what is "widespread popular biases" but systemic coercions?

and no, we specifically don't need to understand individuals, just the systemic coercions (so we can counteract them).

'Systemic coercion' implies outside influence; citizens suffer from a number of internal biases, entirely aside from outside issues. Please just take a look at some of the literature on voter ignorance.

there's no reasonable evidence that people are too dumb/ignorant to make a good electorate. that's primarily ego talking.

and we don't need to correct for internal biases over a population because, by definition, internal biases are uncorrelated. but you said "popular", which is a social bias that correlates beliefs.