Incumbent protection racket worked well Tuesday

USA Today ^ | November 8, 2002 | Walter Shapiro

[BraveMan]

WASHINGTON

[Capitalist Eric]

Just goes to show... denial isn't only a river in Egypt...

LOL!!!!

[CyberCowboy777]

The Incumbent Protection Racket

Very Real

and

Very Sad

[CyberCowboy777]

Districting is a two edge sword

My Congressional district takes Olympia and throws in some rural areas so that the rural areas can almost never vote out the DemonRat.

I say almost because I think with 70% Republican turnout we could take the seat.

[VRWC_minion]

Is it odd to assume that most voters would remain happy with their original choice ? Tey only just voted for the house two years ago and the senator 6 years ago. Unless the elected representative really changed or the electorate really changed its not surprising they get voted in again. It would be surprising if they didn't.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

The blame for incumbent protection rests squarely on the shoulders of the voters. They keep voting for the same people. The United States has exactly the kind of permanent political class the majority of voters prefer.

There are often very good choices but voters do not take the time to consider someone who is not an incumbent.

[coramdeo]

You ain't seen nothing yet - our beloved Campaign Finance Reform Act is the mother of all incumbent protection rackets.

[Crusader Rabbit]

Here in the Copper State we inflicted a rather costly scheme on ourselves (with ample help from the left) to create Congressional districts which were both compact and competitive. Alas it seems that it is actually not possible to do both. Nor is it possible to construct a districting plan with which the courts won't meddle nor one about which the left won't whine.

I am in the most compact of the districts and (while the tally is not yet official) the winner drew over 60% of the vote to the loser's ~37%. If we had made more of the districts "competitive" it would have probably meant one more Republican and a whole lot more whining by the left.

[CyberCowboy777]

I agree.

[George from New England]

Silencing the pastors and ministers two months ago worked really well didn't it!

Congress uses the IRS to hold the hammer over the religious groups. Unfortunately they only use the hammer over conservative Christians. The black churches never see the hammer, they don't feel any government tool to rein them in.

All in the self interest of the incumbants.

[RogueIsland]

You ain't seen nothing yet - our beloved Campaign Finance Reform Act is the mother of all incumbent protection rackets.

I wonder what the Democrats are thinking about that little Act right about now...

[coloradan]

I wonder what the Democrats are thinking about that little Act right about now...

They love it. The media can still report "news" just as it always has, and this "news" has so much liberal bias it will be indistinguishable from campaigning - except that it will be legal, while conservatives, and for that matter, libertarians will be attacked or simply ignored.

[TheHound]

I hear all this stuff about money buying elections, but I just can't remember voting for anyone but a Republican. I wonder how many people really go investigating each canidate. I think whoever spends the most money just turns out more of his base. All the money in the world wouldn't get me to vote for a socialist but well spent Republican money might get me off the couch to go vote.

[William McKinley]

The good-government cause for the end of the decade should be to take redistricting out of the hands of the politicians and bequeath this democracy-determining power to impartial commissions.

There is no such thing as a completely impartial commission when there is so much power and money at stake. To pretend that there is is breathtakingly naive.

[William McKinley]

I never quite understood why both parties buy into Gerrymandering. Yes, I can understand why one party would want to try to gain a partisan advantage, but quite often there are deals made where both sides agree to protect their incumbents.

I would think it would be in a states' interest to make the various districts as competitive as possible; doing so would guarentee an influx of money from special interest groups, providing stimulus to the economy and additional tax revenues.

Were I the governor of a state that had a real balance, I would gather both parties and say "instead of you protecting the half of the seats you hold, and you protecting the half of the seats you hold, with there only being one or two competitive districts, let's draw the map so that we maximize the competitive races. May the best ideas win, and in the meanwhile our state wins as the cash flows in."

[El Gato]

There is no such thing as a completely impartial commission when there is so much power and money at stake

True, but redistricting could just as easily be done by a computer program, with the rules agreed to ahead of time. But that would spoil all the fun of the state legislatures. It might be their only true function as things become increasinginly federalized.

If I made the rules they would be simple. No condiseration given to race or ethnicity, and the districts to be as geographically "connected" or compact as possible. I could probably even write the thing, given a bit of time and money. And if I couldn't, other folks at my workplace certainly could.

[William McKinley]

I know you could write such a program. But the software requirements (what to code to ensure fairness) would be determined by "impartial" people, and the data which would be fed into the system would be fed by "impartial" people, and the results would be subject to the whims of "impartial" state judiciaries, no matter how you crafted the law; just look at the kangaroo courts of New Jersey and Florida for confirmation of that.