As long as I'm being pessimistic and inflammatory, I might as well come to the logical conclusion, the one that most of those who read this blog will already have arrived at long ago: representive democracy doesn't work. The problem runs deeper than the bizarre and technical tyranny-of-the-minority stuff that's embodied in this recall election. The problem is the ignorance of the populace. I'm not equating ignorance with disagreement with my personal views. I'm talking about ignorance in it's most real sense, in the fact that those voting have no substantial knowledge or grasp of the complexities of the candidates and/or issues. Representative democracy is predicated on the idea that those being represented, having a very real stake in the decisions made for the electorate as a whole, will remain informed of and knowledgeable about the issues affecting them. The electorate is not informed. An uniformed electorate leads directly to decisions being made based on incomplete knowledge, and, hence, count as poor decisions. The only way to escape from poor decisions is to inform the electorate. The electorate does not even seem to be interested in being informed. Failure.