I think if you delve a little bit deeper, you'll find it might be a stretch to call these activities democratic. Falsely reporting and accusing users in an effort to squelch their viewpoints, for instance, may be normal for politicians but bears no resemblance to any honest democratic process.
Agree, that kind of specific behavior is really not cool. I think though the idea of trying to uplift or bury a story through organized voting is fine.
It's been a few years since I've really used Digg but how does burying something prevent other people from voting on it? My impression was that once something is submitted it goes on the upcoming page where all the stories are presented chronologically and buries only affect whether it gets on the front page or not. Do things get removed from the upcoming page after a certain number of down-votes?
I haven't used it for a while either, but I'm pretty sure that "bury" kills stories off completely. From their FAQ (http://about.digg.com/how):
Bury. If you find stories with bad links, off-topic content,
or duplicate entries, click “Bury.” That’s how we get the
spam out of the system and let the good stuff rise to the top.
Other than that, they're pretty sketchy on what exactly it does.
