What if the budget is cut so harshly that there is no budget for someone who might potentially notice the problem (and fix it before it is exploited, or make the “we have to stop” decision) at all? The problem becomes undetectable until exploited, so you can't proactively shut things down.

Your assumption that enough people would change their vote (or non-vote if they didn't turn out previously) based on this to make a difference, I think is unlikely to be correct. People complain a lot about public services when they don't work well, but seldom consider (or do but seldom prioritise them) them at the ballot box.

Well, i am basing this on 25+ years of being sysadmin at governmental organisations where most of my colleagues never learned the password to the next level. The password being “no”. Instead they always (alway!) hide the pain so the management layers above know nothing. If they were ever interested. By showing the pain we may actually get them interested. We tried hiding it. Didnt work. Lets try something different.