I'm thinking that fostering a social environment where people are well educated on average and make well informed decisions, is the much more preferable option than simply compelling them to cast a ballot in order to check their name in some list somewhere, and say they've fulfilled their "social obligation", and thus wash their hands. I mean, in the ideal case the former scenario would tend to work much more "naturally" than the latter. If ideal scenarios ever existed in reality, of course.

While "You're all a bunch of donkeys" sounds like great fun, I doubt it's a symptom of a well informed, politically active and socially involved population. It rather looks like a bored population who are wondering what useless stuff to fill their time ballots with.