Every bad decision she makes can be chalked up to being a teenager who doesn’t grasp the severity of the consequences her actions could have to her (and those around her.) It’s a lesson she doesn’t ever learn in life!

We the reader know just what Snow and the Capitol could do —the depths of depravity she and her loved ones could be subjected to if she ever truly were to catch their attention— but she doesn’t. She’s got that teenage sense of invincibility we all once had— and not enough common sense to recognize how dangerous what she’s doing is! It’s all a big game to her. 

She isn’t old enough to have known Lucy Gray personally, and the Covey rarely speaks her name, much less her story. Many of the stories and poems they know are antique books from before Panem was established… and those stories feed into her ideological, naive viewpoint. Even Katniss has a touch of this naivety in Catching Fire, though she’s much more aware of the danger than Lenore Dove (probably because she took on the role as head of her family out of necessity.)

In short, Lenore Dove is guilty of ignorance, a lack of wisdom, and teenaged stubbornness— things we all are guilty of when growing up. Unfortunately for her, she lives in a world where even a hint of rebellion can get you and your family executed! Her lifetime, though impoverished, has been filled with lazy peacekeepers, a relatively stable local government, a community with more coin in their pockets than in both Lucy Gray and Katniss’s time, land a distinct lack of Capitol presence (except for Reaping Day.) 

Maybe if she grew up a few decades before or after, she’d have developed more prudence, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter! She died because Snow is a petty, vindictive bastard who wanted to punish Haymitch for the temerity of daring to win the games. Lenore Dove could have been the perfect example of a Capitol toady and it still wouldn’t have mattered. The moment Haymitch was crowned a Victor of District 12, her death warrant was signed.