We can't be experts on every issue a council is currently responsible for. That's why we have a council in the first place, so they can be, or hire, the experts.

> Putting trust in the particular politicians voters have chosen to put their trust in is exactly why blaming voters is not an unfair shift of blame.

Yet every year we have just a handful of candidates, we pick the ones who advocate for our particular interests, and hope for the best on all the issues, because there is no way of knowing how the specifics are going to play out. We hope for good journalism to let us know of the particularly heinous issues, and then we do our best to vote correctly again next year.

You must have very large hands, unless you are only talking about major party nominees (i.e., winners of the first round of voting from the two biggest parties.) There's a reasonable basis, arguably at least, for limiting consideration to major party candidates, but the nomination process is part of the selection process and the candidates that enter that process, not just the ones that win it, are part of the choice set. If one ignores the process until after most of the critical decisions are made, the remaining choices are quite limited, but that is itself a choice.