Could Open Primaries rebuild trust in MPs?
Penrith and the Border Conservatives select their candidate on Sunday, but in actual fact they're doing more than that.
Because it's such a safe Tory seat, they're effectively picking the area's MP for many years to come.
For that reason he or she will be selected via what the Conservatives are calling a Primary.
This is where a shortlist is drawn up by the local party, but then anyone from the constituency who registers can turn up at the selection hustings and vote for the one they like.
That way they hope the candidate will have support from the community rather than just the select group of local party members.
But some Conservatives want to go much further.
Tory MP Douglas Carswell is proposing Open Primaries on the American model.
Under a Bill he's sponsoring, voters would register in their constituency according to the party they supported.
Anyone registering as Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem would then get a vote on who their party's candidate by a ballot rather than having to show up at a meeting.
The idea is to reconnect voters to their elected representatives
But its supporters also hope it'll diversify the pool of people who stand and are selected too.
And the Tories have tried it. In their selection for Totnes in Devon,16,000 people voted.
But it cost too, a problem that would have to be addressed.
It's an interesting idea, and credit to Carswell for pushing it hard at a time when I haven't heard too many other politicians coming up with great ideas of how to rebuild public trust.
Mind you, the more limited Primary taking place in Penrith this weekend doesn't appear to have generated a local candidate.
None of the six shortlisted are Cumbrians.
It's the second selection for a Conservative seat in the region that hasn't managed to find a local candidate worth putting to the vote.
Hexham also picked from non-locals, although rather bizarrely someone from that constituency has been shortlisted for Penrith and the Border!
The Politics Show will have more on that this Sunday as we report live from the Primary.
I'm Richard Moss, the BBC's Political Editor for the North East and Cumbria. Welcome to my irreverent - but hopefully insightful - northern take on reporting politics for Look North and the Politics Show. 
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