Why the French elections are less likely to be rigged.

Has come to mean "Fucked up beyond all rational belief"

In addition to the presidential selection, there are senatorial and congressional races, county board races, water reclamation board positions to fill, states attorney, clerk of the courts, about 50 judicial races, etc. etc, etc. In addition to ballot questions. It takes a good 15-20 minutes to fill it out even when I come with a totally completed sample-ballot cheat sheet to copy from. And yes, they're paper. And then you put it into a "box" (electronic reader) in full view. And then you get your "I voted."

We're not a democracy because we don't have the government appointing things and invest a lot of authority in a relatively flat, centralized government.

Instead we decentralize authority, have a lot of races, and vote on a lot of financial and city/county/state issues. The heart of totalitarianism, that.

Much more democratic to have one vote whenever the government calls it for either personal benefit by the top politicians or because the government's unstable, or it's planned, whichever comes first, and just to vote not necessarily for a candidate but sometimes just for a party. With the party deciding who, actually, the people want. (That makes the electoral college look downright cutting edge.)

I guess we could have a lot of single-issue elections. But think of the time, the paper, the money, and the way voter turnout would drop like a stone. It's already way down for down-ticket races as it is (much to everybody's surprise, not everybody votes for everything).

but this outcome and many others in Europe, Britain and here in our good ole U.S. of A right wing christians and fascists, to me, are engaging in a holy war against Islam and the Arab cultures and them against the christians....this started with bush, cheneys PNAC mideast misadventures resulting in hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Like I said I just see a pattern here......