I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats

of my own species. A quote from Voltaire. democracy has been associated with the "rule
of the people," "rule of the majority," and the free selection or election of leaders.
Democracy in the Philippines and maybe to other underdeveloped nations or developing
countries, as an example, exhibits its dangerous side for when poorly educated and poorly
informed people exerts its practice.
As ordinary citizens are encouraged to take part in the political life of the country,
they have the power to directly influence the outcome of government policies through the
democratic procedures of voting, campaigning and the use of the press. The result is that
government policies may be more influenced by non-specialist opinions and thereby the
effectiveness is compromised. For example, there is no guarantee that those who
campaign about the government's economic policies are themselves professional
economists or academically competent in this particular discipline, regardless of whether
they were well-educated. , it clearly is a powerful tool for corrupt politicians and
businesses through the use of media propaganda to push their agenda without any
opposition.
It was democracy that ousted the Marcos government which years after, clearly
made the entire nation into misery that it is right now. ruled by corrupt businesses and
poorly and/or uneducated wannabe statesmen.
Democracy is not freedom, but controlled freedom. What happened is that the
people elected officials who are not representative of the people, because these people are
always the rich guys. Let’s look at our past presidential election, millions of pesos are used
for the campaign itself. They spent money for people to vote them, that means they
influence how people will use their rights to vote. Now, how can a poor man compete in
these ways? Isn’t that democracy is always in favor of the rich people in our social class,
people with influenced and connections.
If you are heading out to a journey by sea, who would you rather pick who’ll be
incharge of the ship? Just anyone? Or well educated people about sea fairing? The latter
ofcourse. Voting in an election is a skill, not a random intuition, and like any other skill
it should be taught systematically to people. Letting people to vote without education is
like setting them in a battle without any weapons.
VOTER IGNORANCE

One of the most basic design elements of democracy is the mechanism of performance accountability that is supposed

to come from citizens voting. In simple terms, it is assumed that voters know what they want, are capable of identifying

what policies will help them get what they want, and vote for candidates who pursue such policies and deliver results. Yet

in Democracy for Realists, the political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels offer a comprehensive critique of this

view, which they bruisingly label the “folk theory” of democracy. They demonstrate that U.S. voter behavior is determined

primarily by partisan identities that voters assume, based on various sociocultural factors, especially race, faith, and peer

groups. In other words, voters’ policy preferences are shaped by their partisan identity, rather than independent thought

on any particular issue. They also find that most voters are far too ignorant of political actors and policies to accurately

associate specific policy choices with particular parties or candidates. Partisan loyalties are relatively fixed, but voters are

enormously inconsistent on specific issues.

They also argue that voting based on past policy performance (like economic performance) does not provide any kind

of clear check on governmental behavior. Voters are too ignorant of the overall facts, such as underlying economic

conditions, and too swayed by extremely specific and often minor factors (like gas prices) to exert such control in a regular

and rational fashion. Even if a large share of voters did possess significant amounts of economic knowledge, assessing

responsibility or causality for economic performance is extremely complicated, something about which even the most

well-trained experts can strongly disagree.

Achen’s and Bartels’s work, which draws not just on their own research but many dozens of specific studies by other

researchers, is focused on the United States. There is no similar comprehensive study of this set of issues that looks

comparatively across democracies. There are, however, some comparative studies of civic literacy of citizens in different

democracies. While they show that the United States does tend to fall on the lower end of wealthy established

democracies when it comes to civic literacy and voter ignorance, they indicate that significant levels of voter ignorance

are a reality in most democracies. In other words, the shortcomings of voting as a mechanism for enforcing governance

accountability are a design issue that all democracies face.

Yet contending views on this point exist. In their recent book, Democracy in America?, Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens

take serious issue with it. They contend that while individual voters do lack fully informed opinions about most issues, the

collective or aggregate policy preferences of all Americans are not so problematic. The aggregation process leads to

collective policy preferences that are reasonably stable over time and that in fact reflect a certain amount of deliberative

process, “because individuals form their opinions through a collective social process that brings deliberation and

information to bear on the issues of the day.” They argue that the expressed preferences of Americans deserve much

more respect from policymakers than they currently get in the largely captured American political system and that voter
majority rule “tends to produce public policies that benefit the largest number of people and promote the common

good.”

Furthermore, the evidence for the idea of government by technocratic decision-making, that isolating policy decisions

from citizens’ control broadly produces better policies than incorporating citizen input through elections, is scarce. So too

is the evidence for the notion that not allowing citizens to choose their leaders but relying instead on force, family lineage,

or other such factors will produce better leaders than elections. Adherents of this view tend to focus on the very small

number of authoritarian leaders who have governed well, and to ignore the very large number who have not. They

compare the best of authoritarians, like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, to the worst of elected leaders in established

democracies, like Silvio Berlusconi. But a more systematic look at authoritarian leaders and their policymaking during the

last 50 years reveals an enormous number of cruel, ignorant leaders exerting their power in ineffective and unhelpful ways

for the majority of their citizens. And the technocratic model requires a high level of state capacity—to allocate resources

and implement policies in a well-calibrated fashion—that most countries saddled with dictatorial leader’s lack.