Any attempt to repair democracy - while leaving elections at its center - is bound to fail because elections create a professional political class that is unsuited to genuine democratic rule. As she puts it, members of this group, "whatever their personal, individual qualities", cannot create "assemblies capable of either fully-democratic representation or smart, optimally-beneficial legislation". One reason is that elections select for a particular type: those who seek power and are prone to be corrupted by it. These are, as Landemore writes, "alpha types, the charismatic, the daring, the entitled, the arrogant, even those with no shame whatsoever, and sometimes even the downright psychopathic."
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In the United States, the party primary system is an obvious source of dysfunction. Turnout in primary elections - when parties choose their candidates for a general election - is extremely low, sometimes only 20% of eligible voters, and those who participate tend to be more ideologically-extreme than the public as a whole. This system gives politicians powerful incentives to appeal to partisan minorities rather than broad coalitions of voters.
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    In the United States, years of gerrymandering have helped ensure that at least 80% of seats in the House of Representatives are firmly in the hands of one party, encouraging politicians to cater to intense partisan minorities.