[claytongulick]

The implication here is that there's a sort of "pareto distribution" of capability when it comes to voting "well". This was an issue that the founders tried to solve (in a bad way) by attempting to limit voting to property owners.

Of course, at the time this almost exclusively meant wealthy white men - which is obviously a terrible way to run a voting system.

The converse of this is the "bread and circuses" problem with Democracy. This was supposed to be mitigated by the "House of Lords" equivalent in the U.S. - The Senate.

The Senate was supposed to have been a buffer that protected against popular vote because they were assigned by the state legislature. They were beholden to the welfare of the state, not to direct-democracy political campaigning and all its ills.

Personally, I think its time to re-evaluate the 17th amendment to see if it had the desired effect, or resulted in massive unintended consequences.