Of course, it is true, there are plenty of voters who are a bit dim or a bit inattentive or a bit mentally lazy; and some are nihilistic or fascistic or racist or all of these things; but then there are a very great many who are not ‘uninformed’ at all, but rather absolutely immersed in an atmosphere of total information. Not truth, mind you, and certainly not wisdom, but most definitely a ceaseless flood of information regarding what others say and believe and imagine, facts and fantasies and wild delusions, lies and misapprehensions and confusions, all of which render their minds ever more porous and suggestible, and render reality all the more impossible to distinguish from lunacy. This is neither a culpable failing nor an especially foolish one. Great intelligence can serve as a defense against the deluge, though even that is not a certainty in every case; but normal human intelligence, of the sort that allows one to live on equal terms with the world and make something of oneself, is rarely sufficient.
… And then also we are, depressingly enough, organisms, and our minds operate at only the speed and with only the capacity available to them through the neural complexity and electrochemical processes of the brain. In the ‘information age’, in which the sheer algorithmic velocity of communication within ever more integrated circles of association outpaces the workings of our feeble analogue intellects by an effectively infinite degree, it is only natural that delusion of even the most preposterous kind can easily become a widespread contagion.