Mict, the problem is that while your "solution" of voter aptitude tests is emotionally appealing, you'd have to propose a process under which they could possibly work for it to be taken seriously. Because we've tried it. A lot of times! And every time turns out way, way worse than the alternative. We have demonstrated ourselves utterly incapable, time and time again, of managing to implement a decent aptitude test, and it's unlikely to change because
every singly potential route to getting them is just chock full of perverse incentives the entire bloody way.
The key to implementing a good democracy isn't doing things that
sound good, it's implementing a system that will be hard for people to screw up too badly, and does it's best to secure a good outcome (a government serving and working for the people, representing their interests, and doing their jobs to the best of their ability insuring that the money they are given is put to good use and not wasted on cronies and corruption). Aptitude testing is incredibly easy to screw up, and everybody who would be involved with implementing the program has direct incentives to screw up instead of doing a good job!
And it wouldn't even address the system problems that plague our system in the slightest - it would just hand more votes to the extremists, who are, let's be honest, almost all perfectly capable of memorizing whatever answers they need if they think it will help their cause.
Well, it's more representative... slightly.
Why does this make it better?
Of course, the congress is the real power, and where the most disfunction is. I'd like to hear some reforms in that area. For one thing, small states need to be, in game parlance, nerfed. Why, exactly, are Wyomingites 65 times more politically important than Californians? Just because 250 years ago some Rhode Islanders held twelve other colonies hostage unless they got to pretend they were a real state?
How would this actually fix any of the real, existent problems with our political system? Same for your other solution - how would it actually help? What would it accomplish?
What would be the
practical benefits to making these changes?