I think the results are absolutely qualifiable. That's just an opinion, I understand that, but I think the fact that we're going to end up choosing between Joe Biden and Donald Trump (again) for POTUS speaks to that directly. I think we'd get better choices if we had better voters.

But I realize I could be wrong about that.

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Is it just results that benefit the most citizens?

My criteria would be more serious and thoughtful leaders. People who tried to first discern and then do the right thing instead of just ramming a party agenda down the other side's throat.

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What is the cost of disenfranchisement to achieve those results?

Great question. What IS the cost of disenfranchisement? An even better question IMO—at least an even better one to ask first, before answering the second one—is why is universal suffrage held as such an ideal in the first place?

It wasn't when the country was founded, and the men who designed our system not only didn't think it was an ideal, but recognized how dangerous it was.

The fact is that not everybody's ideas on how society ought to be run are equally valid, advisable, or preferable. That should be an obvious, self-evident premise, but because we have bought into the idea of "Democracy" instead of a representative republic, we don't even question it. Everybody is supposed to get a vote, which means even a really bad point of view can hold sway if enough people share it, and the fact is that any standard bell curve proves that over half the people in any given population are either at or below average intelligence. How are extraordinarily good ideas supposed to win out in that environment when everyone gets a unit of influence?

I guess the cost of disenfranchisement is that more or less you end up with an oligarchy...but you effectively get that with a "democracy" too, because the paradox is that the Great Unwashed are also easily manipulated. BUT, they have to be manipulated with really bad ideas...so it's almost like you get the worst of all possible worlds with a "democracy."