That is interesting.
It does sound like Themistocles was railroaded (before they even had railroads). I never knew the reason he was ostracized.
Having a village council, where decisions are considered and voted upon by all who show up, works in smaller places where everyone more or less knows everyone else and aren’t transients (or renters, for that matter), but was a disaster in a city the size of Athens.
Socrates wound up getting railroaded simply for criticizing an earlier stupid decree (execution of some generals) and forced to kill himself (IOW, he wasn’t merely exiled).
Besides the annual ostracisms, the entire war with Sparta was started because of escalating craziness among the jokers who apparently had nothing better to do than to show up and pretend to run the city. The Athenian Empire began as an alliance against Persia, but since the Athenians were the ones with the huge navy, the “democracy” decided to use a protection racket to extort money from the “allies”. There wasn’t a single ally rushing to defend Athens from Sparta.