Casting a vote in a "real" democracy means putting your trust in a person or group with the promise of representing you and your interests. Without the ability to define your interests in a practical way, you are voting for the most charismatic, most loudly speaking representative.
Not being able to define your interest can be due to lack of education, unwillingness to take part in the political process, etc.
BINGO! It's been taken as a given that more voting is always a better idea. In fact limiting the voter pool for more distant offices (Senators chosen by state legislatures, President elected by... electors) as was originally done in the US might have been a pretty good idea, though the system might need some tweaking Electors are a fine idea, but it's de-facto just a low-information-voter popularity contest vote—when's the last time you even knew who the electors you were voting for were? Have you ever? No one votes based on who the elector is, just who they've pledged to support. Maybe state legislatures, or some part of them, should take that over, too.
Similarly, we've done a decent job of crushing political machines and corrupt unions... but a poor job of crushing the powerful business interests and anti-the-small-guy forces they (sometimes) effectively opposed. As a friend of mine put it, our system used to feature various kaiju fighting, all of them wrecking cities, but some of them doing so while trying to save us, some while trying to harm us. We eliminated all the kaiju that were working to save us (smashing a city block here and there and eating the occasional fire truck, sure) but didn't do anything about the ones trying to harm us, with predictable results.
Isn't that why we vote?