Judge appointments work in a similar way, I assume other offices do as well. Judges often decide precisely when they are going to retire in order to manipulate how their replacement is chosen, by vote or by appointment. These positions SHOULD be mostly non-political and merit based in general. In reality, just like economics, politics is inevitably everywhere. The real solution here is to get out the vote for every election at every level, not just the big federal one every 4 years.

That’s the way voting in a Republic, where you’re not voting directly for every position, law, and amendment, should work. The Republic falls apart and corruption and manipulation of the public will becomes easier when people don’t turn out to vote at the smaller election cycles. The death of local news plays into this too as it becomes much more difficult to stay informed about the people and politics of those smaller local elections. If you think our representative system is broken and needs to change, the solution is the same, get out and vote for every election and support local investigative journalism.