Why Your Vote Often Means So Little

There was once a region of the country known as the “Solid South,” a vast quadrant that stretched roughly from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, in which Republican members of Congress were as scarce as polar bears.

The legacy of the Civil War and the residual loathing of Republicans who were the party of the victorious North produced elections in which the real contests took place in the primaries, and Democratic incumbents were reelected with monotonous regularity.

So reliably safe were Democratic seats in Congress that the party’s Southern incumbents amassed the years of seniority that conferred on them the powerful committee chairmanships.

Now incumbency has become so entrenched in the two major parties and in all quarters of the country that many voters lack any real say in who represents them. Democratic and Republican House incumbents alike share a semi- perpetual easement on their seats that more nearly resembles hereditary entitlement than the competitive politics we associate with a democracy.

How did this happen? Blame redistricting, the process by which politicians carve up territory in response to the rise, fall or redistribution of their population as reported by the census.

And don’t expect any changes with the current redistricting, which is almost complete. By some estimates, fewer than 10% of the 435 House seats will end up fostering competitive elections.

In each of the 50 states, elected politicians can be trusted to put themselves first. In census after census, roughly 90% of all House seats end up so strongly Democratic or Republican that any challenge from the opposing party is largely futile.

For example, this year in California, a state with 53 House seats, only one--the seat now occupied by Rep. Gary Condit, who lost the Democratic primary--is deemed competitive. The influential Cook Political Report, which tracks congressional races, estimates that nationally only 55 House seats are in play, a number the report says will almost certainly decrease by election day.

This anemic level of party competition does not stop incumbent House members from furiously raking in campaign contributions. The combination of favorable redistricting for those currently holding seats in the House and their nonstop fund-raising contributes to what has come to be known as “the incumbent advantage.”

That is quite some understatement.

I have nothing against incumbents. Among them are some of the ablest and most admirable individuals in public life.

But deprived of occasional challenge and competition, even those who walk in the footsteps of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster can come to view their jobs as an inalienable birthright.

The hyper-empowerment of incumbents renders the candidates who challenge them among the most pitiable figures in American politics, unless they are possessed of unlimited personal wealth or incredible luck.

Even those attributes may be insufficient to dislodge well-entrenched incumbents whose party claims the lion’s share of a district’s voters.

This year, because both parties are so evenly divided--Republicans in the House outnumber Democrats by only 11--the fall elections promise to produce a stalemate.

Both political parties will pour vast sums of money into the tiny minority of House races in which there is a real contest, and the 2002 congressional elections will come to resemble the bloody battle on the Western Front in World War I, where hundreds of thousands of troops slugged it out in the trenches with a net gain of territory measured in yards.

Yet the squandering of treasure on these few competitive seats is the least of the unfortunate results of the redistricting.

The severest toll is taken by the political system itself. In a district where the incumbent is endowed with a hefty partisan majority, a substantial number of voters of the other party are effectively disenfranchised.

The rotation in office that Andrew Jackson defined as a central element in a democracy should come about through elections.

That so many of those elections have become mere formalities does us little credit and promotes a passive and apathetic citizenry.