News Release

June 30, 2005

Media Contact: (202) 789-5200

Lull the Vote
Voters once chose politicians. Now politicians choose the voters.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for redistricting reform on California's November ballot may stimulate a national movement to keep politicians from protecting their own seats through gerrymandering. Gerrymandering, campaign finance reform, and public subsidies are three ways that government intervention has reduced political competition, claims a groundbreaking new study by the Cato Institute.

In "Uncompetitive Elections and the American Political System," Patrick Basham, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Representative Government, and Dennis Polhill, a senior fellow at the Independence Institute, claim that American elections are no longer about competition and choice.

Decades worth of gerrymandering, public subsidies, and campaign finance regulation have served only to erode political competition by bolstering the incumbent advantage.

According to the study's authors, current redistricting rules only help strengthen incumbency advantage. Partisan legislative gerrymandering has created a situation where "almost 90 percent of Americans live in congressional districts where the outcome is so certain that their votes are irrelevant." This situation severely undermines electoral competition, "arguably to the point of violating the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause."

Tax-payer funded and congressionally mandated subsidies, such as franking privileges, large administrative staffs, and easy media access provide incumbents with significant resources to secure reelection.

Campaign finance reform, sold as a way to prevent corruption in the political process and foster competition, has instead limited political competition. The authors explain that it is incumbents who "thrive under contribution limits because they, in contrast to challengers, possess the enormous advantage of a perpetual fundraising organization that solicits relatively small contributions from a very large number of predominantly longstanding donors."

Basham and Polhill assert: "The decline in congressional political competition is grossly inhibiting the extent to which the contemporary House serves [its] function of democratic responsiveness." The authors ultimately conclude that "elected officials should be disconnected from campaign and election rule making and regulation. There will not be an improvement in political competition until the incumbent fox ends his tenure as guardian of the democratic henhouse."

Policy Analysis no. 547: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3941

Contact:

Patrick Basham, senior fellow, Center for Representative Government, pbasham@cato.org
Kristen Kestner, media relations manager, 202-789-5212, kkestner@cato.org
Evans Pierre, director of broadcasting, 202-789-5204, epierre@cato.org