Not everyone is a fan of democracy. Other than those who outright prefer dictatorship of one kind or another, some critics simply don't trust all citizens having equal power over their governors. Jason Brennan, a Georgetown University political philosopher, expresses just such a view in his book Against Democracy. Brennan believes that because most people are ignorant of the issues allowing them to impose their will on everyone is immoral. He particularly takes issue with universal suffrage, i.e. one citizen /one vote. As alternatives, he offers various methods of rule by the knowledgeable, which he calls epistocracy.
The idea that only the well-informed should guide society has always been around, dating back at least to Plato. Brennan's book is, nonetheless, well-timed. The two most prominent modern democracies, Britain and the United States, are both currently being run by buffoons. Of course neither buffoon was elected by the people—Trump by the electoral college and Johnson by the Conservative Party—so we can't really blame all the ignorant voters, just some. Nonetheless, both countries are becoming travesties of democracy largely because of voters who were angry but ill-informed, a dangerous combination.
Still, I remain loyal to one citizen/one vote. Although there are those who couldn't care less about voting, I think to most people it has great symbolic value. It says they are as valued as citizens as anyone else. This I think is important, even though Brennan is quite right that most people have a poor grasp of most issues.
But this is a personal conceit. It's just me. Is there some fundamental reason why people would cleave to democracy? Why the vote has symbolic appeal?
The emotional reason must arise somehow from what we, a social species, evolved to be, our natural morality so to speak. Evolutionary biologists talk about reciprocal altruism, “a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time.” In other words, I do you a favour when you need one, you do me a favour when I need one, and if we don't cheat we are both better off. (Cheating is the other half of the story, and an interesting half it is.) From reciprocal altruism perhaps comes our sense of fair play and from fair play, democracy, bequeathed you might say by evolution. ... Perhaps.
The logical reason may simply be recognizing that democracy is essential to a free society. There is no absolute freedom. As long as we live in groups we must have rules. The question of freedom in a society of rules becomes a question of who makes the rules. If one man makes them, or a group of men make them, then we are servants of that man or those men. We are not free. The only way we can be free is to make the rules ourselves. And it follows that we must all have an equal say, i.e. democracy, in making them. If one person has less of a say then that person is that much a servant of the rest of us, that much less free. To accept epistocracy is to accept a diminution of freedom. And that I’m very leery indeed of doing.
As for those who are willing to give up their freedom, well .... they choose to be servants and that's a whole other thing. They will have their own justification both emotionally and logically. Ultimately each person's choice will depend on their personal genetic and cultural history and mine tilts me toward freedom and democracy.
Even if we were to choose those citizens we thought qualified to vote, would knowledge be the best criteria? An important one, yes, but how about judgment, honesty, tolerance, compassion or even simple common decency? You can always gain the knowledge you need, but can you gain compassion?
In any case, people don't vote on issues (except in a referendum); they vote to elect representatives to vote on issues. And they don't vote in isolation. They are greatly aided by political parties who present platforms outlining their positions on issues. This is in fact one of political parties most important functions. Almost everyone I know votes by party, not by candidate, and even people who don't pay a lot of attention to issues have a general idea about what the parties represent.
And once representatives are elected, they are well paid and provided with ample resources to thoroughly familiarize themselves with the issues. They have the entire civil service to draw on, and the civil service contains experts in all the areas they will have to deal with. Indeed, some might argue that a good civil service is more important to a healthy democracy than the elected representatives.
And once legislation is drawn up, it must pass scrutiny in the cabinet, the brightest and best of the representatives (one hopes), then survive three readings in the House of Commons and finally face review in the Senate, before receiving assent. It isn't as if policy was concocted by the ignorant masses on a whim and imposed willy-nilly.
Certainly democracy as it is practiced can use a lot of improvement. But overall it has done better than any other form of government, so it would seem sensible to improve it before leaping into some form of epistocracy. Interestingly, one form Brennan discusses, the "enfranchisement lottery," which involves choosing a random set of voters by lot and immersing them in a competence-building program, sounds very similar to citizens' assemblies, a form of decision-making I consider quite democratic and think should be used a great deal more. I have discussed citizens' assemblies elsewhere.
As long as lots of room for improvement is available, allowing everyone the equal right to simply pick a candidate they think mostly shares their values, or favours their interests, and letting those selected candidates deal with the issues—with experts at their elbows—would seem to be the sensible choice. Democracy has proven to the best of all the many systems we've tried so jumping to something new before we have given it every chance would be a risky venture.
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