I’m toying with the idea of holding retention elections for Congress. For those who aren’t familiar with the term it means that instead of incumbants running against challengers the voters just vote in favor or against keeping them. If more people vote “yes” then the incumbant stays in office for another term.
I am wondering how this would work for Congress. The main positive I see with retention elections is that it would change the playing field. Instead of just voting for the lesser of 2 evils ( which is how I always feel ) it would give voters a chance to give an opinion of a single representative. If they like the job being done then the person stays in office. If not, other people get to compete for the job.
This would also address the incumbant advantage. Advances in electoral science, and not just gerrymandering, make it hard for challengers. Incumbants tend to have a large initial advantage so they can pummel their opponents with so much negative campaigning in the early stages that by the time the opponents’ campaigns get off the ground so many voters already have an adverse reaction to them that they have no chance.
Retention elections would force incumbants to campaign for themselves. Of course, they do this already but that isn’t the “sexy” part of the campaign so it gets little media attention. Without the juicy oneupsmanship the media would have less incentive to treat elections as horseraces and might spend more time attempting to answer such pedestrian questions as, “what has the incumbant done?” and “how will reelecting the incumbant affect our lives?”
Also, I hope this might encourage incumbants to try to broaden their appeal rather than just playing to their base. In a retention election they can be thrown out of office if they fail to both placate their base and win outside support.
On the downside, people who dislike the candidate can still go negative and there is no one to retaliate against. So I’m not sure.
Are retention elections for Congress a good idea? Would they be constitutional?
So if the people vote “no - we don’t think the incumbent is doing a good job”, then you have to have a second election to put someone else in the incumbent’s place? Seems a bit wasteful to me. Would the ex-incumbent be able to stand in the second election? The voters may change their minds when they see who the alternatives are.
Then who will campaign against the incumbant? Seems as though they’ll have a much easier time getting reelected if nobody ever challenges them. After all, all the public will hear is their side of the story.
If you’re counting on the press to do the job, remember this: only one side will be paying for ads.
Good questions. I would say that having been rejected the incumbant would lose their job and not be allowed to run in the current election. Though they could run again in the future. As for the cost in time and money of retention elections, I think they might be worth extra expense if they improve the political scene.
There is no shortage of “outside” groups in America who pay for political ads. Some of the 527s are even genuinely unconnected with a major party. But of course whichever major party doesn’t hold a seat has an interest in defeating an incumbant from the other party. My concern is exactly the opposite: that there will be so much campaigning against the incumbants that even the good ones will get thrown out.
I think a retention election would actually give an incumbent yet more of an advantage in Congressional elections. Most long-time incumbents are basically untouchable in elections. If they only had to get through a retention election in which no major candidate could be putting forth ideas and etc, then it would make the whole process quite a lot easier for the incumbent. There’s really only two ways a long-term incumbent can lose his/her seat: 1) an extremely damaging political scandal, 2) an extremely charismatic and popular candidate challenges them. Under a retention system number 2 would no longer be possible.
Well, in Chile in 1988 there was a plebiscite to decide whether Pinochet would stay for 8 more years or not. The “no” campaign was very active and numerous opposition leaders had a chance to give “their side of the story”, too.
Based on our experience with retention of judges here in Illinois, I would have to agree with DSYoung. Venal and incompetent judges are almost never voted out of office, despite a retention requirement of a 60% affirmative vote.
I’m not sure why this is, but there’s an old saying in politics that “You can’t beat somebody with nobody”, and it appears to hold true.
Suppose such an election were split into two questions on the same ballot, as in a recall election. The first one being “Should Congressman X remain in office,” the second being “Should Congressman X fail the retention vote, which of these candidates should replace him?”
Hey, it worked great in California a few years ago.
This ignores the question of why incumbants have such an advantage. As I have said, part of it is that they have learned to go negative early. As the saying goes, “You only have one chance to make a good first impression.” Politicians have learned to deny that chance to potential challengers. Once people have a negative opinion of you it is hard to get them to admit they made a mistake.
As I see it, the advantage of retention elections is that they focus solely on the merits of the person currently holding the job. Think about the 2004 presidential election. When Howard Dean broke out of the pack and looked likely be the Democratic standardbearer the GOP attack dogs went after him right away. When his campaign faltered and John Kerry became the frontrunner the negative spotlight turned to him. He was being discredited long before he actually became the official Democratic nominee and the general election campaign offically began. He ended up losing even though President Bush had a negative job approval rating.
Let me put that another way. Bush won even though most people didn’t believe he was doing a good job. How could he have held onto his job if he hadn’t an opponent to disparage to deflect from his own shortcomings? I think the same would hold true for congresspersons. Only if people generally approved of their work could they hold their seats.
We have retention elections here in Penna where the judges never lose either. I don’t think we can apply that to political races though. First off, because they are political. I’ve heard about Karl Rove mounting serious, sustained negative campaigns against sitting judges but that’s not how things work here. I’ve never seen an attack ad against a judge. It’s just a different environment.
Plus, judges are still esteemed by society unlike politicians who are routinely revilled. Certainly certain judges have aroused antipathy but ( outside of the far right ) there isn’t much of a “Throw the bums out!” feeling against them as there is with the politicans. Again, I have the opposite concern, that winning a retention election will be so difficult that even decent legislators routinely get thrown out of office.
I wonder why incumbents have such an advantage in the US. I come from Australia where (if anything) there is slight disadvantage to incumbency. This may be partly due to a different system of government, where the head of the executive branch is chosen by a majority of the lower house of the legislature, so that local candidates mainly campagn on the basis that they belong to a particular party. But it’s not that unusual for incumbent candidates to lose in seats that (based on the previous election) are ultra-safe. Often the local campaign is based in part on the theme that the major parties will neglect the seat in government, either because it can’t win it or it can’t lose it, and concentrate goodies on marginal seats. (Successful candidates in upsets in such ultra-safe seats will usually be independent, and will often be former members of the party that would normally win the seat – having left the party over some disagreement with the local member or the party).
