Part of what they talked about was how essential it was to have good education, good communication, and a vigorous free press. Just having people vote doesn't do shit. Even back then, they understood that. The people have to know what they're doing. Things like Trump and the poorly educated who vote for him in large numbers were a known failure mode of democratic systems, even back then. They actually tried to design in features to make sure that only "educated" "responsible" people could vote as a check against it, although, that had its own problems.

They also were somewhat terrified of political parties and the opportunities for corruption and self-interest they created. A lot of the sadness of the system they set up is that it tended to collapse into a binary system with each "team" operated by a party, because good modern voting technology was something they were not yet aware of. Sadly. Read George Washington's writing on political parties sometime, it seems incredibly prescient if you look at the rot of the late 20th century that set the stage for Trump.

I don't completely believe in George Carlin's mindset of just turning a blind eye from the system, but he was right that you get exactly what you put into it. Voter apathy is more than just not showing up to vote, it's voting but then not paying attention to what the representatives are doing, and not telling them you don't like it (or you like it, positive feedback is good too). A representative government won't work if you don't stay involved except for a single day in two or four years.