At
06:00 PM 2/11/04 -0800, you wrote:
This sort of argument against smd's is a bit
too simplistic.
...
Second, the complaint about incumbent entrenchment is a red herring.
Campaign finance laws do as much if not more to advantage incumbents
than any redistricting.
I believe this is greatly in error.
See the several editions of "Monopoly Politics" available through the
Center for Voting and Democracy website (www.fairvote.org). These
studies are done years and then many months in advance of the elections
to predict the winners of US House races; the only factors considered
are the presence of an incumbent and the district's voting breakdown in
the most recent big election. With nothing but these factors you can
get over 90%, often 98% accuracy of prediction. In other words, money
is at most a second order variable and, in terms of changing the
outcomes in the general election, probably has less of an impact than
the weather on election day.
Money in general election campaigns *follows* the district
gerrymander. The people giving money are not typically interested in
funding losers -- and they very much want to be welcome in the winners'
offices ... so they give to the likely winners, and they know exactly
who those people are b/c they know how the district is drawn (to elect
a D or an R).
I recently showed the same thing here in Michigan, where the Michigan
Campaign Finance Reform Network issued a study purporting to prove that
money determined the outcome of state legislative races ... even as
their data showed precisely the opposite.
The overwhelming majority of US Congressional and state legislative
districts are one-party fiefdoms. Except for rare established
incumbents who can, for a while, sometimes hold a seat despite an
unfavorable districting, there are simply no examples of legislators
using money to overcome a gerrymander. I'd be interested to know of
any elected legislators you can name who successfully outspent their
opponent and, as a result, triumphed in a district drawn to elect that
opponent.
Bottom line: money controls primaries; gerrymandering determines
general elections.
John Gear, J.D.
"It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you think you
know that's wrong" --
Will Rogers
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