What's Wrong with Voting?

So far, I think most people would agree that the best way that the human race has come up with for running happy countries is democracy. It's true, "the people" get to choose who they want to make the important decisions for them. So why's it so crap!? Why do we have more people voting on reality television shows than we do in general elections?

The obvious answer is complacency, people don't believe that their vote will make a difference and so they don't bother.

From an early age we are told that you must vote, you have to have your voice heard. If you don't vote then you can't complain when the government does something you don't like. Obviously, this is true, however, increasingly (in developed countries at least), people don't really care about political parties. People don't really care about the taxes being shuffled differently, or about more cycle lanes, or about health service reforms or anything. But they must vote, they must care, they were told to, so they absorb the crap they are fed in the media, and that is how they make their choice. And it is these people that vastly distort the elections.

I don't think the problem is that not enough people vote, if anything, I think that too many people vote. People that don't care, or more importantly that don't know what they are voting for will turn up in their masses and play pin the tail on the donkey, with guidance from the media as to where they should place their pin.

So you have millions of people voting left or right depending on which class of society they are in, what their background is, and probably most influentially, what media they absorb. This distorts the views of the people who actually care, actually know what they are voting for and is the biggest battle faced by democracy in developed coutries today.