Or rather as Sir Winston Churchill said: "the best argument against democracy is a 5 minutes conversation with the average voter". A quote that is often at risk of being misunderstood like "soo, if Churchill was against democracy, how come they let him become England PM?". Actually that quote should focus the attention on how the power of democracy needs some level of culture to be used properly. Voters who keep listening to clowns appealing to their bellies during speeches will inevitably put those clowns (actually very clever people acting as such) in power who in return will keep shaping their country as a wonder park for other clowns, ruining it for everyone else. Therefore, that Churchill's quote should be read between the lines as "you want democracy? Fine, we all do, but that is a powerful tool just like a gun or a car, therefore here are the books, go study them and take some tests, then we talk about democracy".

A bit less catchy than Mencken's "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."[1]

1: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken#1910s

The election system itself ensures that voters' opinions on most specific governance issues are entirely ignored.

Since citizens vote for only one out of a very restricted pool of candidates, every five years, the rational decision is to only consider the candidates' stance on topics directly affecting one's material well-being (so mostly finance/employment-related decisions).

Unless voters are very prosperous, secondary quality-of-life decisions like surveillance are systematically pushed aside in general elections, and that regardless of their education level.

That was a pretty common sentiment and even law for quite some time. A bunch of people died and/or devoted their lives to changing that.