Imagine being forced to retire while also being told that your vote isn't even wanted/respected.

Probably some slopulist led revolution to institute communism, followed by a million or so deaths, societal collapse, and a century of no true Scotsman fallacies defending it. I don't listen to commie critiques because they are all illiterate and ahistoric hacks, and I don't take anything they say as quaint or humorous because they are amoral campists who hide behind masks.

Thanks for the flashback to high school

We're on the same page but not the same paragraph.

If we're gonna be ageist and generalise I'll add my 20c worth. In your mid-twenties you are neither more or less sharp than in your mid-sixties or even seventies. Much has to do with genetic, developmental, cultural and particularly lifestyle factors. A twenty-something person who has lived in physical, social, or cultural deprivation is unlikely to be as sharp as a sixty-something person who has lived in relative affluence which would be marked by healthy nutrition, reasonable educational opportunities, contacts, stability, etc.

General knowledge is also culturally loaded.

Anyway, I won't rave on. The gist is that generalising about personal attributes like age, gender, etc, is a bit silly and not useful. They cannot be used as sole indicators of anything. We grow and develop out of a complex of factors and we need to implement real democracy, as you say, and also work towards a much fairer and just society than we have now.

You've responded to me but I think you meant to respond to someone else.

I have not proposed a max voting and and yes, I did read the article and I thought it was so interesting that I posted it here.

No matter where people stand, it's great to see that they care about our democracy.

Direct democracy is a pretty flawed and exhausting way to do things. It's very rare that a person has strong knowledge and interest in more than one or two domains and so consultation is necessary. Every individual replicating that work is an idealistic fantasy.

You can look at how rapidly interest in repeat votes falls off in cases like the French revolution. Copying a model of recallable ground up councils seems more sensible to me.

Local people get together and send some number of speaking/voting representatives to the next tier of organising body and so on. Meetings are always open, but only these representatives have the right to speak so you can actually get stuff done. People who aren't happy with how the people they chose are doing can always recall them and choose again. You aim to have consensus as a process for approval with quorum establishment to break critical lock ups. Power can be devolved to higher councils but recalled by the lower ones, so ultimately the seat of power is the local level where people are much more engaged and social mechanisms help temper abuse of power.

It's undoubtably slower and less efficient, but stuff like the anarchist councils in the Spanish civil war shows it can work I think. It would require trial and revision.

edit: importantly though we can't say we live democratically if the majority of social arrangements necessary for live are dictatorial. Housing, work, and community life must be transformed. Voting on some law or trade treaty and then going to your completely disenfranchised job to pay rent for your disenfranchised housing is not democracy in any material sense.

I wouldn't trust Australians to vote directly on issues, these are the same people who made the ford ranger and toyota hilux the highest selling vehicles for years, even though the majority of Australians live in cities.

There is no doubt that the system is broken, and the majority of politicians, and parties are corrupt, but the people make really bad choices.