Especially in parliamentary democracies where people already take political quizzes to make sense of all the parties and candidates on the ballot.
Why ? Don't worry, everything will be fine. Sincerely, FAANG
So uninformed people participating isn't an unfortunate side effect, but rather the point: making everybody feel included in the decision making processes, to make people more likely to accept political change.
"I think we do democracy not because we think the masses are informed and make good decisions, but rather because it's the best system for ensuring peaceful transitions of power, thereby creating social stability which is conducive to encouraging investment in the future.
The lack of warlords leads to peaceful transitions. Trump can feel all he wants about the 2020 election but his sphere of influence was too small to take control.
This isn't the case for all those power struggles when a monarch dies. Each Lord had their own militia they could mobilize to take control and leads to stuff like War of the Roses.
We had this same issue going into the Civil War where the US army was mostly militias so it's pretty easy to grab the southern ones together and go fight the north. This isn't going to work so well post-1812 where a unified federal army exists. Of course, if you start selectively replacing generals with loyalists then you start creating a warlord.
"Let me ask Grok who I should vote for..."
what on earth??
practically every metropolitan area and tons of smaller communities have multiple news sources that publish "voting guides" in addition to voter pamphlets that go out before elections which detail candidates positions, ballot initiatives etc.
barring that you can also just... do your "frantic googling" before the election. it's not a waste of your time to put a little of it toward understanding the political climate of your area and maybe once in a while forming an opinion instead of whatever constitutes a "moderate" position during the largest rightward shift of the overton window in decades.
Maybe the best defense of voting is that there are so many reasons people vote that it is hard to manipulate everyone in the same way.
Of course, that is historically. Voting is quite compromised at this point no matter how you slice it.
"Renfield, you are free now. Yes, master." /s
Why do need a licence to drive but not to vote? Except non-birth citizens effectively had to acquire a licence.
Philosophers have probably thought about this and can provide an answer. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with their literature.
I like Rawls' Veil of Ignorance as a principle for thinking about issues of fairness. Would I choose to live in a society where only informed citizens could vote even if that might preclude me? Probably. Hard to honestly put oneself behind that veil though.