Incumbency Advantage and The Matrix

I'm going a bit over the top with this, but I just watched part of The Matrix: Reloaded, so it's in my head a bit.

Political Science is full of papers discussing the incumbency advantage. In the midst of my second run for Congress I have become well aware of many aspects of that advantage. It is a matrix of factors, each of which helps incumbents and/or impedes challengers. This matrix is not an evil computer program running society. It is not a malevolent conspiracy of evil geniuses a la the fantasies of the John Birch Society. Rather, to paraphrase the first President Bush (I call the current one Bush Lite), I see a thousand conspiracies of idiots. Chomsky is a much better source to understand the failings of our democracy.

Gerrymandering is the most well-understood aspect of this problem, though it doesn't help incumbents much in primaries. The biggest problem in my eyes is media bias against covering challengers, as I discussed in a previous post about media bias in elections. Parties are also a major factor in the matrix. Parties nearly always support incumbents -- the Republican Party consistently has supported its most liberal incumbents against conservative challengers. Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island is the latest example, but Arlen Specter and Sherwood Boehlert also fit. In 1996 in this district the Democratic Party supported McNulty even though he was Newt Gingrich's favorite Democrat.

There are many other factors that support incumbents and inhibit challengers. It's a long list. Underlying all of these is the fundamental difficulty facing challengers - voters don't know who the challengers are. This has become so extreme, as incumbency reelection rates near 100%, that we do not really live in a democracy. If voters in a particular race only know who one of the candidates is, then they are not really making a choice.

Theoretical models of "social choice" (I'm referring here to such concepts as the voting paradox of the Marquis de Condorcet as well as Downs, and to Kenneth Arrow's Impossibility Theorem) look at democracy as a system of aggregating individual preferences. That's pretty thick. A simple example is to think of a majority vote between A and B. If 51% of the voters prefer A to B, then A is chosen over B by the system.

But what if the voters don't really prefer A to B? What if they've never even heard of B? That is the reality of most modern elections. You, the reader, right now probably cannot name the challenger running for state legislature in your district. If you can you are the rare exception. I confess that at this moment I don't know who's running as challenger in my district (I suspect there is no challenger since I was just at a Republican county meeting and no challenger in that race spoke). I do know who the incumbent is (Jack McEneny - he's a good guy -- but see below about good guys).

Sophisticated campaign teams routinely poll voters to determine how much name recognition each candidate has. They also poll to see whether voters have a positive or negative impression of each candidate. Often those polled know little or nothing about the candidates, but they have formed an impression one way or another -- usually through biased media. If the voter thinks A is a good guy (remember McEneny), and the voter doesn't have an opinion one way or another about B, the voter is likely to choose A.

One simple solution to this problem is to make voting in each race a two-step process. First the voter would have to choose the names of the two candidates from a list of four or five in a multiple choice test (or three out of seven if there are three candidates, etc.). Then the voter would be presented with a choice between the two (or three) candidates he chose. If the voter chose the correct two candidates, then his vote counts. If not, his vote doesn't count.

Okay, we all know that's never going to happen. But it is an interesting idea.

So what can we do about this matrix? I'll offer my opinion (it is my blog after all): Whoever you are, whatever the issues are that motivate you, if you are dissatisfied with the current state of our government, you should commit yourself to destroying this matrix. Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, for or against the Iraq war, pro-union or anti-union, etc., nothing of significance will happen with your issues until the anti-challenger matrix is destroyed.

Before your substantive issues can be addressed, you must first focus on this problem. The first step is to stop supporting incumbents. You must never do anything to support an incumbent, ever, until the matrix is broken. Incumbents are inherently biased against reforms that would help challengers.

You should support free postage for candidates, even if you are a libertarian who opposes there being a government post office. Free postage for candidates means that libertarian candidates will have a voice. Once voters recognize the wisdom of libertarianism and we obtain the libertarian utopia you seek, then you can end the free postage. But it is necessary now.

You should oppose limits on campaign finance, even though the process corrupts elected officials. This corruption is trivial compared to corruption that arises from having a safe seat. Without having to worry about challengers, incumbents can disregard the will of the voters and that corruption is far more dangerous. When your ideas win over the voters and we reach your liberal utopia, campaign finance will no longer be necessary since all of the voters will be well informed thanks to your enlightened education policies.

On a more practical level, you should pester media at every opportunity to report on challenger campaigns. At the least you should do so for challengers whose positions you support against incumbents whose positions you detest. And you should help challenger campaigns as well.

As for me, I have recognized my new purpose in politics. Getting back to the parallel with the movie The Matrix, I just might be The One. Okay, probably not, but maybe I'm Morpheus or just some bit player helping them. And no, I'm not Trinity.

To carry out my new purpose, I realize that I must destroy my current political self. I will close this campaign with my own immolation. Stay tuned. The fireball will explode in late October.