And yet they do it, not every 6 months, but regularly. There are presidential elections (2 rounds every 5 years), general elections for the parliament (2 rounds every 5 years), elections for local (2 rounds every 6 years), department (2 rounds every 4 years), and regional councils (2 rounds every 6 years), and European elections (1 round every 5 years). Plus the occasional referendum. This year there will have been 4 voting days.

Sure, they don’t vote for judges and sheriffs and stuff, and it’s a system that’s more representative than participative as in, say, Switzerland. But it works.

One of the things that helps is that voting happens always on Sundays, when most people do not have to take a day off work to vote or to help counting.