I don't really agree with the article either, but for different reasons. Voting is to democracy as is telescopes is to astronomy. Democracy is about the peopl

I don't really agree with the article either, but for different reasons. Voting is to democracy as is telescopes is to astronomy. Democracy is about the people being in charge, of the government existing for the benefit of the people (as opposed to a dictator/absolute monarch/aristocracy) on the broadest possible stretches. It's about replacing the people in charge peacefully every few years. It's not about every decision being made at every level of government always being in line with what a majority might vote -- and it's emphatically not about online votes for silly things. It's an abomination to suggest such votes have anything to do with democracy (or, if you're so minded, an elaborate tactic for the power cabal to create the illusion of people being in power, but that theory is rather diminished by the power cabal not following the decision). Democracy is worst form of government, except for all other others. It's not perfect, and it doesn't hold the seeds of perfection. It's at best a decent way of preventing a strong man and his cronies from grabbing too much power too fast -- it's not even a guarantee against that happening. However, the unexpected strong performances of Trump and Sanders in the US primaries is for all its weirdness a symptom of the system working, however imperfectly: It's a huge vote of non-confidence in "the system" and the perception that it has been captured by some vaguely defined instance of not-the-people (Sanders: Wall Street; Trump: Who the hell knows? Mexicans?) and that (however crudely) something should be done about it.