This led me to think that Lemmy is currently vulnerable to the same problem. I’m wondering if it would make sense to brainstorm some ideas to address this vulnerability in the future.

I think yes and no to this. Yes because Lemmy as it currently exists kind of has the same thing going on. People who create the communities are the creators and that's that.

But no, because federating is supposed to be a mitigation here. I know that mastodon.social and pixelfed have sometimes shut down signups to purposely spread the userbase across other servers, and perhaps some rebalancing across credible servers can help here.

That would be my first idea.

I think I would veer away from elections because that could have unintended cultural effects. They could be gamed, create inward looking drama that makes no sense to people on the outside, etc.

I like the brainstorming here though, and I agree that your suggestion would help avoid that problem, but its at the cost I think of bringing on some unintended consequences. If we can lean into existing features that would be my option A.