The idealized citizen in liberal & classical democracy is an anarchist, a free person participating in the matters of the "polis"(city), the "free" distinctions has plenty of consequences if you really get into it, we're talking about people from antiquity here, what they were saying is that only free people could be trusted to participate, this immediately creates a problem of class distinction i.e.: people who owned land, that were free enough to be able to learn philosophy, etc. So, although implementation was imperfect from the start, the kernel is good.(btw I'm an antiquity geek in case you haven't noticed).
What I'm getting at is: there's no rewrite at all, actually, it would be maintenance, paying the tech debt and sticking to the vision. This hollowed out democracy we're with now is a joke.