[smacktoward]

The problem is that the skills required to win votes generally don't have a lot to do with the skills required to be competent in any field other than electioneering. So elections don't end up quickly revealing and demoting the incompetent people so much as they do raising up people who are competent at electioneering, regardless of their competence or lack thereof in other matters.

An example from history. Elections are actually how volunteer units in the early days of the American Civil War selected their officers. Every soldier got one vote, the whole regiment got together and cast their ballots, and the guy who got the most votes got to be the commanding officer. Very democratic!

With just one problem: in almost all cases, soldiers voted overwhelmingly for officers who promised not to make them do all the tedious army stuff they hated, like drilling in formation and practicing their marksmanship... which it turns out are actually very important things for a unit to do, if it wants to actually perform in combat. So these units had a bad habit of dissolving into mobs of terrified amateurs (and therefore getting slaughtered) the moment they entered battle.

Eventually it was decided that it was more important that army units be able to function in combat than that they be democratic organizations, and the elected "soldier's friend" officers were kicked out and replaced with hardasses. The soldiers hated them, and swore under their breath every time they were called out to drill yet again. But they learned how to fight.

[yodon]

That's incredibly interesting - do you have a source for it?

[smacktoward]

There's some good pointers to the election processes of a few different regiments (North and South) here: http://civilwartalk.com/threads/question-about-election-of-o...