R: Hold Elections

To some extent, elections are absurd. They feature low-brow campaign trail antics, raucous rallies that seek to emulate the spine-chilling awe of religious experience, and supporters who wear impossibly-large hats and impossibly-gaudy suits. In some countries, candidates send cars and motorcycles blasting speeches and political propaganda throughout urban areas, orchestrating a near-constant cacophony in the days leading up to important elections. Why does some subsection of the population get to decide, in just one day of voting, the course of a country for the years to come? Do we trust voters not to be myopic, fickle, and irrational on election day? Do we really think that our society's best and brightest will run for office, given that doing so will expose themselves to the public spectacle and intense scrutiny of modern electoral politics?

Demonstrators on the streets of Hong Kong in recent months seem to believe so, as did the Arab Spring protesters and those who supported democratization efforts in places like Spain, Korea, Chile, and Taiwan a few decades ago. For all of their absurdities, elections are an expression of social contract theory, the idea that a government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. America's Founding Fathers believed that by electing leaders at regular intervals, the people could hold their leaders accountable for abuses of power, prudent management of the state's affairs, and general respectability. One might also argue that by giving every citizen a say in the political process, elections can give people a reason to educate themselves, think critically about law and politics, and serve their communities.