The pool of potential voters would need some level of verification for activity and status as a real person, so no fresh accounts or easy botting. It also increases the level of effort required to manipulate a vote, there’s no guarantee for a hostile actor to actually get randomly selected enough to affect whatever votes they want.

I don’t think it’s foolproof, but I’m sure there are workable solutions to any issues.

I already said sortition is a possibile solution that could eventually be implemented. I’m sure the community can come up with others as different problems arise.

Sure, but your solution is to abandon democracy entirely and rely on someone to rule over you. I’d rather the effort be put into making democracy work.

The only way a council of trusted users could work (and still maintain democratic legitimacy)is if it’s chosen by something like sortition for each issue individually. This would be from a larger pool of active and at least verified non-bot users.

Even with that, the tools to set this up don’t exist, and it would require far more community participation than is likely to actually happen. Without going through a process like sortition you end up with a council of clerics effectively ruling by decree.