Research by David Dunning, of Cornell University, has come to the conclusion people rarely correctly determine the competence level of someone that is more competent than themselves, and since the US is becoming more and more incompetent (see dumb), it is hitting the threshold for democracy to thrive.

"No amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, "very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is."

Mato Nagel created a political simulation based upon Dunning's work and concluded that Democracy elects candidates that are only slightly better than average.

"Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders.""

This reminds me of the famous Winston Churchill quotation:

"Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

read the full article at LiveScience.com.