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The 'educated voter' argument is bunkum, of course. Modern school education in developed countries is such that virtually every person alive today is far better 'educated' than virtually every person in the 19th century, so on the 'educated voter' argument almost all those property-enfranchised, male, white privileged electors should never have been electing parliaments back then. It's a rubbish argument.

The real purpose of parliaments is to create legitimacy and acceptance of government by subjecting government to control by representatives - of ALL the people. A close corollary, as Elliott mentions, is emphasising a sense of legal equality of all citizens.

Look, we can all see that this US stuff is just partisan (and in some minds, racist) attempts to manipulate electoral outcomes, and thus control the power of government. The education argument, bizarre as it is, is merely a cover.

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It’s pretty ironic that people who are only in a position of power due to the democratic process are so willing to gut that very process.

One contributing factor might be that there really isn’t much process to the democratic process — upwards of 90% of incumbents seeking reelection win.

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