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Notes -
So the conclave works by the election of the metropolitan archbishop of Rome by certain clergy who serve directly below him, except those clergy are actually bishops which have been incardinated(shares a root with 'Cardinal') into Rome in some titular manner. A mass suffrage version would have resulted in Cardinal Pizzaballa as pope. Likewise, the Holy Roman Empire and Germanic elective monarchies used very limited pools of voters(literal single digits in the former case).
Mass enfranchisement is the distinguishing factor. Obviously 'citizens who can be expected to bear arms' is a smaller pool than modern democracies tend to be comfortable with but it's more than any elective monarchies I'm aware of.
Yeah that's what I'm saying.
My point is that there was probably never a point in Europe when an "election" was a foreign concept you'd have to explain to an otherwise educated person. It was always a tool in the toolbox, just not used by those people for that purpose.
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