Frankly I don't think the community at large is qualified to elect admins. I certainly believe that if "community representative" positions existed they should be elected positions. Admins are not community representatives to the devs, they are not even necessarily powerful figures within the community (though some have certainly become so through their adminship).
To compare it to real life for a moment (dangerous on these forums I know):
Admins are really here to enforce the rules (like police officers), and as such the people most qualified for selecting admins are the people that make the Statutory Laws (the written rules) and the Common Laws (the case by case "common sense" rulings). The devs and head admins have the most knowledge about the qualities of character that an admin will need, and they have seen first hand those qualities of character that make someone a bad admin. The community, by and large, would vote exactly as citizens the world over vote (we are worse in America to be sure, but it can be seen in every "modern democracy"), namely with their gut, or with their friends. That, to me, sounds like a recipe for quite a bit of corruption.
I think most of the frustration that people have with admins is that they view the position as one of power within the community. While that can at times be true, the position of admin is more about duty and service to the community then about power. Admins simply enforce rules the devs have made, and supply their common sense and experience to situations were the rules are vague. They do this with no pay, and given the numerous and sundry duties the admins have that is actually rather impressive.
For instance, did you know (at least i am 90% sure this is how it works, I am not an admin after all) that all non-poll bans must be manually removed. So every time one gets banned for teamkilling an admin has to be on-hand when that person is scheduled to be un-banned and manually remove the ban. Imagine the logistical nightmare that must be.
Opening adminship to community elections would turn the reality above into a reality wherein admin positions would be more about power within the community then service to the community. And that is exactly the type of thing that causes corruption to become rampant.
As it is I would say admin corruption is at fairly minor levels. For instance, on the NA side of the map I think Chaos has the most admins, and yet they are losing their war in strat pretty soundly (no offense chaos guys, but it would do nothing to deny the reality of the situation). If corruption were truly an issue I think we would see a correlation between number of admins per clan, and what clans are "winning" strat. As it is we see the inverse to be true.
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Also, I think that the admins should be accountable to the people that make the rules (i.e. the devs), making them accountable to the player base would only create an excuse for some admins to ignore the devs authority and make their own rules (as they would view their power as coming from the players and not the devs).
That said:
A system wherein the community could petition to have an admin removed of their position could be nice. It would achieve the removal of truly corrupt or abusive admins (I'm looking at you dach), without allowing for the power-plays that would result in making admin an elected position.
