On the contrary, I think this goes to the root of the matter. Can you trust people or not? That's a fundamental question that decides whether you can have real democracy, or only a sham. Because any kind of democracy where people are only allowed to make "safe" choices, decided on by someone else (e.g. the censors), is a sham. And that's true even if the censors themselves are directly or indirectly democratically appointed. Iran is a good example of such system taken to its logical conclusion.

I'm sorry but trust isn't a binary value. I trust people in my life to be reliable and trustworthy to a certain extent and in certain areas. I don't trust my party-animal buddies to be on time for breakfast a 8 AM, and I don't trust my stressed out workaholic friend to just chill on a Friday afternoon.

You cannot simplify trust to a single variable; you have to go case by case. And trust in the masses is partial; finding where it is and where it is not is critical.

But at the end of the day either you give everyone a vote or you don't.

A system where the most trusted people had 10 votes and least trusted people had 0.1 vote might make sense in a society of nerds voting on a software project, but not in general political application.

Given that that's how the us elections work, it seems like plots of people have considered a good approach

How would you manifest that partial trust when it comes to political power, though? The problem with that power is that splitting it up is a zero-sum game - you can give less to "the masses", but then somebody else is getting more. Who would that be, and why would you trust them?