Looking at the photos from the election and the aftermath, it just struck me that our democracy is in the hands of career civil servants at folding tables sorti

Looking at the photos from the election and the aftermath, it just struck me that our democracy is in the hands of career civil servants at folding tables sorting through piles of paper and bespectacled old ladies explaining how to fill out that paper. That is, as you say, preferable to a military industrial complex or lobbyists that seem to make the decisions so much of the time.