democracy can only work when the value of the property being decided on is held by those who have a vote, and their vote power is in proportion with the value (relative to the whole, the commonwealth)

neither parliamentary democracy nor modern, secular liberal democracy are valid applications of democracy because the main point is about stake... when you have none, your vote having a nonzero value means you can vote to have property reassigned to you, ex nihilo

the "greatness" of america was based on the right of ownership of property, and the voters were solely those who owned property, but even then it was weak, because they summarised the relative value, so you could get a vote out of a few square yards of dirt and make decisions about things that would affect those with thousands of times more

the only form of democracy existing in the modern world that actually follows the original principle is the votes of shareholders, and even there, the delegation of vote power to delegates is a dangerous step that requires a complicated process of disbarring a delegate and allowing reassignment of the vote power to a more preferred delegate

without stake, democracy is just a mob of violent people shouting