By enabling a mechanism of civic duty, it may in the long term lead to a better informed public. Voting is not a duty in most countries and even where it is a duty (Italy for example), it runs up against the bottom line of what electoral systems are all about: the possibility to choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, both the object of investments of enormous sums of money that expect to reap future dividends (It appears the combined warchests of Obama and Romney have passed the billion and a half dollar mark).

In effect voting is a one shot deal once every few years that tends to encourage infantilization of the citizenry and a disaffection towards the civic good. Voters express poorly considered opinions rather than exercise judgement, the latter a question of investing time, thought and one's personal repute in making a decision.

Unfortunately, electoral systems are equated with "democracy" and are largely considered a sine qua non. However, the present use of the term began with Woodrow Wilson. Before him, the term "democracy" had a very bad reputation. Our present forms of governments were literally created in a very rich period spanning perhaps 80 years from the American and French Constitutions to the invention of proportional representation in Europe in the 1860's. None of these experiments were conceived as "democracy" at the time but as a means to limit or eliminate hereditary aristocracy, by creating systems of checks and balances and ostensibly encouraging the advent of an aristocracy based on merit and time limits on magistracy. Considering the levels of enfranchisement at the time it was all very upper class with a healthy dose of self-glorification. The new elites just loved their new toy and generally dreaded the idea it could fall into the hands of the plebs. (An exception would be Jefferson's good friend and muse, Destutt de Tracy, who advocated female equality, universal suffrage and no contest divorce.)

Getting back to the specific case, as some comments make evident, there is utterly no "democratic" reason to change the House of Lords. It would only be a pale copy of the poor Commons, hostage to parties and the codswallop they shovel, in turn hostage to the ever present financial elites that keep those parties alive through "loans."

The House of Lords is quite the contrary a very "democratic" institution precisely because its members are not elected but generally selected on merit, some outstanding, many not so much. Since they haven't to respond to parties or an electorate, they have the leisure to use and express their judgement for the common welfare, which is probably why their House is now so powerless.

Much of this discussion has been affronted by Keith Sutherland in his essay A People's Parliament. Beyond Sutherland's advocacy of the use of sortition in the House of Commons, the dilemma of "democracy" and our present day "democratic regimes" is very much debated by the better minds on Sci Po Square. For a sobering and illuminating foray into all things democratic, I recommend Adam Przeworski's Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government.