[anamax]

> When considering a decision, elected officials may consult existing scientific literature, may commission scientific studies or polls on the issue, or request the public comments on their specific proposal.

You really don't know anything about elected officials.

Look at their backgrounds - how many of them can understand any of the sources that you propose?

And then there's the assumption that they're just deciding between competing proposals. They're often creating proposals.

> If they rely just on information provided by the richest, and which represents the interest of these richest groups, the politician's decisions will be suboptimal.

Since they don't, that's irrelevant. (It's easy enough to see that they're influenced by groups that aren't "rich". See AARP, Greenpeace, etc.)

It is important to remember that an elected official's job is to get elected and re-elected because anyone who doesn't do that doesn't do anything else either.