You don't really, the people on the ballot aren't chosen by you. They are chosen by two parties, and if you don't like them, too damned bad.
Anybody can file the paperwork to be a primary candidate in any political election. For some positions, they need to collect the required number of signatures. For other positions, typically local, they need merely declare by the filing deadline to have their name on the ballot. If you meet the age and residency requirements, you could run for public office and I could vote for you (if I lived in your district, town, country, whatever, depending on what you were running for)
And furthermore, the political parties are not foreign countries or secret underground societies... they are national organizations, with state and local branches, regulated by public disclosure rules, and open to any citizen.
I forget who said it first, but "decisions are made by those who show up."
Electoral college is important, for those two positions. The President decides who the USSC judges will be (confirmed by congress), they are in for life.
The President appoints Supreme Court Justices as a Constitutional duty and would continue to do so even if a Constitutional Amendment were passed that abolished the EC and replaced it with direct election. An amendment, of course, is the only way that would be possible... and while I would support it, I'm not entirely convinced it is essential to the future of the Republic or anything.
But we are no longer a disparate collection of 13 little nation states where there were fewer inter-dependencies and communication was restricted to the speed of a horse's gallop, which is what we were in a de facto sense under the Articles of Confederation. As a modern nation, where every community is interconnected in significant ways, and mass media has replaced the town crier, I think the people are better served by speaking as one voice, rather than 50 voices... and we are better served if every voice is equal. Under the EC, the smaller states actually have more sway than the bigger ones, which is what allows the rare situation where a majority of EC votes can go to a winner of a minority of popular votes... as happened in 2000, regardless of whether of not one believes Bush actually carried Florida.
But that is an academic argument as without an amendment, the EC is the law.
And term limits don't mean what you imply. Term limits mean exactly what it means when you are president, i.e. you can't hold the office for more than X (in this example, 2) consecutive terms. Most offices in the US Federal government have no term limits.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, they absolutely mean what I said they mean. Legally speaking, term limits are, as you say, restrictions on the number of terms a citizen may hold an office in a lifetime. Incidentally, the President's term limit is not two terms. It's actually 10 years to account for a President who takes over in another President's term.
However, many states have instituted term limits. 36 states have term limits for governors and 15 have term limits for legislators.
In 1995, in a 5-4 decision (U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton), the US Supreme Court ruled states cannot impose term limits upon federal Representatives or Senators, despite a Republican lead attempt to do just that. This is a good thing. If you live in a state that had federal term limits, your state is at a disadvantage to other states whose representatives are able to achieve the seniority necessary to hold chair positions on meaningful House and Senate committees. Essentially, you'd strip your elected official of the power to most effectively lobby for the needs of your own state.
However, while not a legally enforced term limit in the sense you mean, elections do represent the ability of the people not only to propel a candidate into office, but also to extract one from office. In this sense, elections make every office holder "term limited" by the will of the electorate... and that has always been the argument of those who oppose term limits.
I would only oppose term limits that didn't effect all members of the House or Senate equally. I would not be opposed to a uniform term limit, if that is what the people want... but frankly, if that is what the people want, then more of them ought to quite being pussies and show up to vote.
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And predcon, I don't think you are right. FDR served 4 terms and died in office. Although it was absolutely because FDR served 4 terms (well, 3 terms and 1 year). Harry Truman established the Hoover Commission who drafted the language and it was ratified in February of 1951.
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Sorry to be so long winded as this really isn't about Wiki Leaks... But it is history and politics... two topics I am almost as interested in as gaming :-)