Yeah it’s a a tough balancing act. Ideally you shouldn’t have to study every legislative proposal but you should also know you can’t blindly ‘trust’ some dude that recites your team slogans to actually do what those slogans imply. Representative democracy is supposed to be the best of both worlds, but it still needs voters devoted to self-governance.

Sorry self-government isn’t easy but the quality of any democracy is directly related to the quality of the participants in that democracy. If you’re not willing to devote yourself to the quality of democracy you want to live in you cannot expect anything more.