There are two major problems with political campaigns these days.  The first is outside money.  To fix that problem, campaign finance laws should allow only voters registered to vote in the election in which a candidate is running, to contribute to that campaign.  No PACs, no Unions, no corporations.  Only registered voters.  Furthermore, to prevent any hint of “buying a candidate,” all contributions must go through a central clearinghouse and are then disbursed anonymously to the candidates.  Joe Shlabotnik can tell the candidate that he donated $1000, but there would be no way to verify that assertion.

The second problem is incumbency.  Incumbent congresscritters have a significant advantage over challengers.  Term limits are not the answer, because that would restrict voters’ choices, and they may actually have a popular, competent congresscritter.

Now that you have stopped laughing….  Party members are often reluctant to challenge a powerful party member in a primary, and such primary challengers have as difficult a time as general-election challengers do, and perhaps worse.  After all, rarely can one argue policy in a primary, and the challenger obviously has less experience than the incumbent.  So one must argue incompetence.  Well, incompetent compared to what, other politicians?  That’s not a big yard-stick.

Then, in the general election, people tend to vote along party lines, even if their current congresscritter is incompetent, they would rather have an incompetent congresscritter with whom they agree than a competent one with whom they do not agree.

The solution is to insert a no-confidence vote.  If a candidate loses the no-confidence vote, he cannot run for re-election.  The congresscritter’s party will choose another candidate for the general election.