Jinx999 Wrote:2) That people can lose their votes due to felony conviction. I'm not arguing that felons are good citizens or would vote sensibly - but this is a power I fundamentally believe that the government should not have.The felony conviction thing is a case where changes in one part of the system are not reflected in another part. The loss of vote thing dates back to the days when only the most heinous crimes, like murder, rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery were felonies. When that was true, you could make a reasonable case that it made sense. Unfortunately, the "law" in the US has shifted so that almost everything is a felony, and every single person in the country commits multiple felonies just going about their daily business.
3) Elections for judges. All mechanisms for selecting judges are open to abuse, but I really think that this would lead to judges making popular decisions, rather than those in accordance with the law.
As for elections of judges, I can understand your concern, but in practice it's not an issue. It's effectively impossible for anyone who's not a lawyer with lots of time on his hands to have any idea what any of those judges have done in their career, so you just get a long list of names that nobody knows anything about. Of course that means that elections for judges are still a bad idea, but because they're completely meaningless, not because they influence judges' decisions.