“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” – President John F. Kennedy Jr.

A foundational aspect of a Republic must be that elections are a release valve. As the community’s needs change, so must the leadership. If the leadership refuses to recognize those needs, eventually the community will find a way to force change, which sucks for everyone.

A little pain now for the politicians (losing an election) is much better than the big pain later (guillotines in the streets). That’s exactly what happened in pre revolutionary France: the currently leading political party gerrymandered the votes and took 95% of the parliamentary representation, then made elections only happen every 7 years. They refused to let the public have a release valve by reasonably fair voting and changes in government.

Everyone paid for their greed later.