I'm in no way suggesting that one vote should be valued more than another one, but that people should be doing their homework and researching properly the benefits and consequences of their decisions...
Having a majority of the population voting with the gut can lead us to disastrous results...
This election shows more than any other that people will bend the facts to fit their feelings. The well educated just have more tools at their disposal to lie to themselves about it. Everyone works primarily by their gut feelings and everyone rationalizes it after they've made their decisions internally and unconsciously.
If after this election you can't step back and see this then this is further proof to me that the system works and works well, because it keeps tyrannical well researched experts in check from their own irrationality. It's not an accident that an overwhelming majority of well educated experts who write the policies that drive a country support free trade and globalization, while real people who are not disconnected from the real world and who actually feel the effects of those policies do not.
It is a mechanism that places the process, the system, above the ruler, and provides a strong and formal mechanism for replacing the old ruler with the new one.
Totalitarian states nearly always descend into chaos and violence when the dictator dies. Without clear succession rules, they rarely have an undisputed successor ready. Monarchies are historically more stable, but every so often a ruler dies without an undisputed heir, or one is such a blatantly bad ruler that civil war breaks out. Some dictatorships are able to maintain stability and prevent revolutions or civil war with more or less extreme repression.
Democracy is meant to solve all this. There is no need to take up arms against a bad king, if you know he or she will be replaced in 4 or 8 years. People who were at least consulted about the choice of ruler (in the form of elections) are less likely to dispute the ruler's legitimacy. Succession isn't disputed, because it's the system and not the ruler that chooses the successor.
Revolutions and civil wars are bad, they used to kill millions every other generation. The system we have maintains itself with minimal repression. So yes, one down side of democracy may be that people get to decide about issues they don't really understand. It's totally worth it.
You say that like it's a good thing. Every 4 years we are called to legitimize the next crop of corrupt politicians sold to the financial interests. We can even choose who we like best between two corrupt candidates. Yay, democracy!
I don't think voting is the greatest thing. Voting silences the minority, instead of integrating it. Voting is blunt. Stamping a paper every four years don't make someone involved or responsible for a country.
Another vice of the voting election system is that one candidate might have a foreign policy I like but an educational platform I hate. That would force me to pick which is more important for me, say, education or world politics. It's sad to choose between two things when both are essential. My political will is so poorly expressed such by kind of voting, it's as if I am only allowed to say part of what I wanted to say.
The vices of voting that you mention are more an artifact of a first past the post, two party system: over time, any idea that has a plurality will get all of the influence. Any idea that never has a plurality will never have any influence.
In a system with proportional representation and a tradition of coalitions, over time, an idea that has 20% of the vote will gravitate towards about 20% of the influence. With many parties to choose from, the choice for your educational platform may not be automatically bundled with a choice for a foreign policy.
You should also note that in most democracies this is already accounted for. The people who feel they didn't do their homework simply do not vote, and leave the decision on others.
I lived in a communist country, and we had a system that was controlled by, ostensibly, the experts (the party members). It was a disaster.
In practice, democracy works; it doesn't work in theory, because you're wrongly comparing it to some fictional system which makes ideal decisions (whatever that is). It works in the U.S., it works in Switzerland. Those are some of the most developed countries in the world.
I am just a concerned person, since most of the candidates spend too much time discrediting their opponents, rather than discussing about their proposals.
The electoral process had became a reality show rather than a mechanism to choose a representative, and it is saddening that people are picking a candidate because of a catchy slogan, rather than because of their proposals...
Given the relative pointlessness of the process is it surprising that it turns into a beauty/uglyness contest?
I don't like this line of reasoning, because I do believe the issue is much more fundamental: people want different things.
Now, there is an argument that if people do their research properly, they will have known all the consequences of their decisions. And hence everyone will have the same ordering of concerns from "most serious" to "meh". That's not true for the fact that consequences and the future are really really hard to predict. Not to mention that "what exactly are good things" is still very subjective. Look into philosophy, there are a gazillion moral frameworks, even if you just pick Utilitarianism, it's still unclear what constitutes "utility".