A part of the population certainly is stupid to varying degrees. But I think mostly the large part of the population have enough of their own issues and things to deal with. They’re content to let people who supposedly are supposed to have their best interests at heart do the bulk of the leading. So long as those leaders don’t needlessly make their daily lives harder or interfere with the brief amounts of time they have to devote to hobbies and family activities.

To change that you’d by necessity need to change how our society is structured. To reduce the amount of daily problems demanding the bulk of the population’s attention. Allowing more attention to be devoted to things like developing informed opinions on Governance and getting involved politically.