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It so happens that Lee County is in the market this year for two top cops. And as is customary around the nation, dating back into history, we’ll select our winners in two totally different ways.

On the one hand, the office of sheriff is up for grabs as its four-year election cycle completes yet another loop. After what promises to be a fang-baring campaign this summer, voters will head to the ballots in August and decide whether to keep the current guy in office or re-hire the other guy they kicked out the last time.

Meanwhile, in Fort Myers, a more routine hiring process unfolds: City officials will whittle down a pool of applicants’ resumes, interview their top candidates and eventually designate a replacement for retiring Fort Myers Police Chief Hilton Daniels.

No voting.

No “pick me!” pamphlets.

Presumably, no allegations of ineptitude and moral sloth among the candidates.

Why is it this way? Why do we vote on one and let politicians anoint the other? Do the two processes churn out categorically different winners? And which system keeps us safer, anyway?

Fans of the election process say it’s the true democratic way, bringing to bear the collective hiring judgment of thousands of voters.

“In a sense it is a true vetting of the candidate,” said Collier County Sheriff Don Hunter. “A huge opportunity exists for the public to inquire over a very long and extended period of time, (with) ample opportunities to find any defects in the candidate.”

Besides which, Hunter and others contend, once the election’s over, the sheriff can get down to the business of police work — minus some nosy politician with the power to hire and fire butting in.

Others find more to admire in the appointment process, with its carefully drawn job descriptions and the resumes it can cull from around the country.

“You tend to get a much more professional candidate, because you can’t hide behind a show,” said Rod Shoap, the onetime sheriff of Lee County who’s seeking to oust his replacement Mike Scott and reclaim the job this year. “I could put on a series of commercials and make you think I’m anybody” in a campaign — but, he argues, you can’t fake diplomas, credentials and references.

In any case, poke around locally and the most common explanation you’ll find for the duel systems is simple: We do it this way because this is how it’s done.

Which is to say, in part, that in Florida the office of the sheriff was ordered up by the constitution. In just about all the state’s counties, that person is elected.

Indeed, according to the National Sheriffs’ Association, nearly every last one of the estimated 3,088 sheriffs in more than 45 states are hired by voters.

Far, far fewer police chiefs, it seems, campaign for their jobs.

But what’s changed over time is how we employ them.

Fred Wilson, director of operations for the sheriff’s association in Alexandria, Va., says that historically, sheriffs worked in more rural areas. Cities, eager to assume control over themselves, imported the notion of the municipal police department from London.

As those cities grew and, in some cases, overshadowed their county capsules, municipal police departments have also in some places nudged local sheriffs out of relevance — assigning them to run the jails and serve divorce papers. To be sure, Wilson says, city officials weren’t about to hand their hiring power over the police chief to voters. Which means that millions of urbanites, even if they vote for a sheriff, are not in fact electing their top cop.

Such has not totally been the story in Southwest Florida, of course.

The sheriffs of Collier and Lee retain the roles of chief law enforcement officers, though they by and large leave policing within city limits to the various chiefs. From Hunter to Scott to Daniels, everyone took great pains to describe the relationship among the agencies as harmonious.

But in keeping with tradition, we do elect one and appoint the other.

In interviews, several locals with direct experience in both processes seemed to prefer, perhaps not surprisingly, the one that gave him his job.

With his easy grin and gregarious manner, Scott could be the consummate cop-politician. He said that while the appointment process filters candidates with stringent education and resume requirements, “I don’t think any of those things alone dictates competency.”

“If the process was so ultimately wonderful and infallible, then how can one explain” high turnover rates among various appointed officials, Scott said. On the other hand, he said, while anybody can run for sheriff, “the people aren’t going to vote in a high school drop-out that’s been arrested 20 times, drunk and disorderly and everything else.”

Hunter is a veteran of five campaign cycles. He allowed that elections are imperfect — voters can be indifferent to the whole race, or distracted by petty issues — but he said the grueling, public test of character reveals a crucial ability “to keep calm, remain professional, while solving a problem.”

Wilbur Smith picked two chiefs during his tenure as mayor of Fort Myers. He maintained, like Shoap, that the appointment process could more likely turn up a highly qualified, credentialed candidate. And if the chief turns out to be a dud, Smith said, that person can be fired far more easily.

That said, Smith figured many police chiefs would have a tough time making it as sheriff, with the high-profile campaigning demands. And in the end, Smith, now a Fort Myers-based defense attorney, said he’s happy with the status quo.

“It would just be so cumbersome having — how many police chiefs do we have in Lee County? — three elections,” he said. And if sheriffs were appointed by a county commission? “I think it would be highly political.”

Perhaps the only important question in all of this is whether one system keeps us safer than the other. Daniels, with his eye on retirement up in Fort Myers but hoping the city manager will involve him in the selection of his replacement, said it’s just two different ways of reaching the same goal.

“The crime rate hinges upon the current population, economic times and the leadership ability of the sheriff or chief to convince officers every day, ‘This is the goal you need to achieve,’” Daniels said.

Sometimes juggling the demands of the city officials who hired him has been tough, he allowed, but he’s pretty sure he’d have made it to the top either way.

“I could have wowed the voters,” he said with a laugh. “I would have handed out candy or balloons.”