Ok, this is somewhat inspired by the United States Presidential election in the year 2000, and partly inspired by the voting system right here on E2.
The problem that I see with democracy is that everybody is allowed to vote. Now I know what you're thinking "That's what a democracy is! If the people can't vote then it's not democratic." I understand this, but hear me out. People assign personal value to things in a number of different ways, one way is if they have to work especially hard for an item. When people have to work for something, the item becomes inherently as valuable to them as the work which they did for it. Another way in which value is assigned is if the item is extremely rare, if something is hard to come by, the item assumes a value about equal to the amount of work it would take to replace it. The third most common way to assign value is utility. If an item grants a specific utility to an individual then it assumes the value of that utility.
The right to vote in this country is not worked for, it is not rare, and it grants only a minute amount of utility. Because of this, the people of the country see their vote as having little or no value. They understand that they have the ability to contribute their opinion as to who should be the next leader, but because they did not work for their vote, it is not rare, and the chance that it will affect the election is so small, it has dimished value.
Now compare this to the voting system we have right here on E2. Here, the right to vote must be earned. A person has to score a number of points AND do a certain number of write-ups to earn the right to vote. This makes the vote itself more valuable to the noders, and encourages them to use votes more responsibly.
Now of course, it would be silly to require a person to write essays on random trivia in order to be allowed to vote for the president, but shouldn't their be SOME qualification? The concept of democracy relies on the intelligence and responsibility of the people, but how are these qualities ensured?