By Matthew G. Bisanz

Every two years Americans vote in federal elections. All of the seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are up for election.

One would think the re-election rate would vary greatly across the country and over time depending on the nation’s needs. Especially with the rapidly changing global conditions and the constant demands of individual constituencies which, cannot possibly be solved by the federal government. Yet for the last decade and a half, the re-election rate for the House has consistently stayed above 90 percent, hitting 98 percent in 2000.

Now an idealist would say that this just proves that voters are discriminating and pick the best candidate. However, that assumes that congressional representatives fail in their jobs to a lesser degree than almost anyone else does. It is assumed that the national unemployment rate is 5.5 percent, yet a termination rate of two percent in congress is considered normal.

Might the real answer be that incumbents have created such a system that they are hardly ever defeated?

If one looks at a map of the congressional districts in New York, one receives a lesson in not only geography, but also geometry. For one, congressional districts do not follow topographic, population density or historical guidelines. There are only two rules — that all districts must contain a roughly equal population and that they can only cross bodies of water, not other districts. With that in mind, incumbents realized it was to their advantage to draw the districts in such a manner as to ensure that voters who support their political party end up in their districts.

The eventual result is the below map from Illinois. As you can see the two communities are connected by little more than a highway. Such divisions are common and eventually if all of a state’s voters are divided into districts of like-minded people, all incumbents are insured victory.

The second reason incumbents are so readily re-elected is through the process of the pork-barrel. Incumbents know their constituencies want things. They want better schools, lower taxes, better roads and more jobs. In theory, these would remain local concerns, as the small number of congressional representatives a state has would be unable to push such projects through a national basis. Again, in the interests of re-election, incumbents from both parties have banded together to enforce the status quo.

So now if an island with 50 people on it in Alaska want a $100 million dollar bridge, a mid-west congressman might agree to vote for it, if Alaska supports his proposal for a museum dedicated to corn. Multiply this by all the congressional representatives and senators and soon the bill for the pork-barrel has ballooned to over $20 billion dollars a year. While these projects, such as studying the feasibility to construct a tunnel from Nassau to New Jersey are questionable, they do deliver money and jobs to local constituents who can then repay the favor by re-electing their representative.

Who is then disadvantaged? Reform candidates who would do away with this wasteful spending.

What is the answer? One method that seems to work is term limits. If congressional representatives could only serve X number of years, then he would be motivated to work for the good of the whole, rather than trying to bribe his constituents for their vote. Another idea might see districts designed by computer for compactness, rather than drawn on the basis of the last election results.

America can overcome the issue of incumbency only by electing candidates who represent all of the people in their district instead of trying to redraw the district to make it more likeable. We need representatives who will place national interests over local problems, because that is the real purpose of a federal government.

Matthew G. Bisanz is a senior political science student. You may e-mail him at [email protected]