Democracy in crisis?

Silly DU. If only they'd talked to a rat-choicer before publishing the statement "Democracy is in crisis when citizens don't vote" in their lead editorial yesterday, they'd know that a significant school of thought holds that democracy is actually in pretty good shape when people don't feel the need to vote. Of course, one's trust in that theory may vary (and, since I started this blog in part to argue against some of the implications of pure rat-choice, I'm hardly one to talk), but I'm not convinced by the DU's overall point that students should involve themselves in local government en mass. While I generally support democratic action as healthier than the lack thereof, I much prefer informed democratic action to uninformed or single-issue self-interested involvement (which students seem to be more susceptible to). In issues involving long-term residents and short-timer students, I tend to suspect that the long-term residents will often make better decisions, both because of their stake in the community and the financial pressures students can bring to bear on unresponsive municipalities.

As for the overall subject of the editorial, the neighborhood caucuses held last night, I may have more thoughts later, and will only note now that 'worst system, except for all the rest' is a strong contender for my assessment.