Just to chime in, albeit a bit late, on the original premise of the thread.
I think that there are a few fundamental factors at play that provide an "answer" to the question of whether or not elections can/will fix this mess:
1. Free and Open Elections: do we still have them, or not?? (How widespread is election fraud and will it ever be stopped, or at least reduced?)
2. Candidates running that will actually do something to halt the decline and attempt to restore the Republic. (Without a significant number of these candidates, there is really nothing that voting can ever accomplish.)
3. The willingness of people to actually turn out and vote in both primary and general elections, at all levels from local up to national. I believe that turnout for 2012 was estimated to be somewhere around 57%, lower than both 2004 & 2008. That's a lot of people that aren't voting, and the percentages are typically lower for the midterms and other "lessor" elections.