Our VISION for reforming America’s political system includes making our Congressional races competitive in each election cycle.
Responsive Government
and Competitive Races
Today's Congressional Races
Are Uncompetitive
They are this way by design of the two major political parties. When a seat is won, the incumbent has a natural advantage, to be sure. However, there are other forces consipring to keep incumbents in power that make political races uncompetitive.
These forces are:
Gerrymandering: The art of making unnaturally shaped boundaries of a district to include constituents who will be more likely to vote for the constituent. The word originated in 1812 when Massachusetts Governor Eldridge Gerry drew a political map resembling a salamander to favor his party. Learn more.
Financial: An incumbent will naturally draw in more money – payola to many – since obtaining (buying) their influence translates to a sure thing in terms of legislative support. Money poisons representative government; the policies end up supporting interests at the expense of policies that would help constituents.
Competitive elections mean representatives need to pay close attention to their constituents’ needs. They no longer guarantee political agents that want to have their legislative needs taken care of. But to the People, this means better representation of their concerns.
Our Vision...
is to overcome these factors to have races in which the candidates have to compete – each time, each election – to naturally drive a responsive and attentive government.
How we are going to do this is encapsulated in our calls to action:
- Reform the primary system to be open
- Elect officials to State Houses who are committed to ending gerrymandering, and
- Enact term limits to periodically bring in new ideas.
Our other strategy is to run effective lower-cost campaigns (HL to Ultimate Campaign Finance Reform) and win against well-monied campaigns. This is a challenge, but we strongly believe that when the People themselves opt for this, the use of excessive money becomes a liability, and fades from the political toolkit.
CIV Values Merit Over Money
And so our vision concludes with one final picture of enjoying TV during election season – without being continuously slammed by repeated political ads. This is a vision we can all agree on.
Scott A. Rappoport