It's an interesting idea, but I think the more important part is ensuring that the candidates are qualified. Of course whoever decides on who's qualified or not

It's an interesting idea, but I think the more important part is ensuring that the candidates are qualified. Of course whoever decides on who's qualified or not will have a lot of power over the process. There needs to be some sort of objective measure to determine that, and that's going to be hard, and constantly subject to attempts to allow or ban popular controversial candidates. Personally I've been thinking if maybe it would be a good idea if everybody could both vote for someone, and against someone else. That way, the most controversial candidates would never be able to win. Athens had a slightly harsher system where people would vote to banish anyone who was deemed to have become too powerful. On the other hand, if the system is too moderating, it could become too conservative and it might become impossible to change the system once it's on a certain course; any popular newcomer who wants to address certain problems in the system would immediately be blocked by everybody who benefits from those problems.