If you have fifty bright and highly competent people, I'm skeptical that adding fifty idiots is going to make much of a difference. Most idiots will accept meritocratic authority if they can be convinced that their needs are taken into account (which they should). Some will obstruct, but probably not enough to significantly derail anything, and the good-faith idiots will bring information and perspectives that wouldn't be considered if they weren't there, so they aren't exactly useless.
In fact, I would argue that idiots in elected bodies are a lot more likely to do damage than random idiots, because they are more likely to be narcissists, and being elected boosts their sense of self-worth. And of course, the most damage is often caused by the most intelligent of them, because the main problem is acting in bad faith, not a lack of wits.
> Most idiots will accept meritocratic authority if they can be convinced that their needs are taken into account (which they should).
Idiots aren't "convinced" of anything. They aren't capable of following the kinds of syllogisms that the mean HN user considers to be painfully simple logic. These people likely did not sit for High School geometry, as they would have been out of their depth intellectually. These people don't analyze, they vibe. They are far more likely to side with the "cool" 95 IQ confidence man than the "weird" 135 IQ sperg with an actual understanding of a given topic.
It's important to understand that our principles (like "all men are created equal") are instructive, but must be constrained to the relevant context. If they are allowed to bleed beyond that context, they can quickly become toxic. So while we should defend to the death the notion that the idiots among us are just as valuable as the rest of us in the abstract, and that they deserve equal protection under the law, we shouldn't behave like idiots ourselves out of some confused over-application of our principles. We would make idiots of ourselves, for example, if we were to ask an idiot to manage our investments, or tutor our children. The very idea is unthinkable! Yet for whatever reason, when one's immediate personal interests are abstracted away, it becomes more difficult to be honest about such things. Yet the critical fact remains: entrusting such people with the literal fate of our civilization is just abominably stupid.
When we're ready to have this discussion about the franchise in general, we might actually begin the process of pulling our civilization out of the ditch and getting it back on track!
The ditch? You're alive in the greatest year in the entirety of human history to be alive.