Power of incumbency bad for voters

By BRUCE REED and MARC DUNKELMAN

Competition and democracy go hand in hand. After races that came down to the narrowest of margins in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, Americans are getting used to hard-fought, close presidential elections — and the 2008 campaign is the most electrifying in years. Both Democratic candidates have won more primary votes than any previous nominee. Both have ushered new voters into the process, as has the sheer closeness of the campaign.

But real competition is still a rare commodity in the House of Representatives, which the Framers designed to be hard-fought. For all the talk of thin majorities in both chambers of Congress, artfully designed districts protect most House members from the sword of Damocles. During the 2002 election, when Republicans maintained control of the House, a full 91 percent of members defeated their opponents by 10 percentage points or more. Four years later — in an election in which Democrats took control of both chambers — all but 60 of the 435 voting members of the House won by more than 10 points.

The relative comfort that most members of Congress enjoy — so stark in comparison to the half-percent and 21‚Ñ2 percent margins in the past two presidential elections — diminishes the power voters can exert over the agenda in Washington. When members can’t lose, voters do — because it takes the pressure off Congress to get the job done.

Voter suppression

Besides letting members off the hook for failing to do the people’s business, noncompetitive districts also suppress voter participation. Elections where the outcome is assumed from the start receive less media attention. Candidates do not feel as compelled to make their cases to the public. And voters aren’t stupid: When the outcome is essentially predetermined, there’s less reason to cast a ballot.

Indeed, the Democratic Leadership Council has found that — on average — 30,000 additional voters participate in congressional elections decided by less than 10 percentage points. That’s equivalent to expanding the voting pool by a sixth.

On average, 214,000 voters cast ballots in the 60 competitive races run in 2006. In 60 noncompetitive elections (in which members won by between 50 and 90 percentage points), only 153,000 voters came out — 28 percent less.

The same study postulates that if every congressional district were redrawn to be competitive (meaning that all 435 were balanced to produce spreads under 10 percent), as many as 11 million additional voters would cast ballots. It is impossible to imagine a district-by-district map that would produce uniformly competitive races (no matter how you draw the lines in Manhattan, for instance, it would be hard to craft a district evenly split between Democrats and Republicans). But it is difficult to believe that a nation divided by margins of less than three percentage points in the past two presidential elections is accurately represented by a House in which 85 percent of members won their districts by more than 10 percentage points.

Currently, states draw the lines that separate congressional districts using a variety of means. Iowa, for instance, has empowered a nonpartisan panel to map lines that minimize partisan advantage. As a result, the average margin of victory in the 2002 Iowa House races was a mere 13 percentage points — and an average of 202,000 voters cast ballots in each district. Virginia, on the other hand, allows its legislature to gerrymander districts to the advantage of incumbents and partisans. Largely as a result, that same year the average margin of victory for Virginia’s congressional candidates was more than 60 points, and mean voter turnout was almost a third smaller than in Iowa.

If we want more Americans to participate in their democracy, we should make sure more of them have an opportunity to affect the outcome of the campaign for their local seat in Congress.

X Bruce Reed is president of the Democratic Leadership Council. Marc Dunkelman is the DLC’s vice president for strategy and communication.