Some scholars and advocates point to two primary factors as causing an overstatement in the actual bias that incumbents enjoy. Strategic retirement and incumbent quality, these critics say, account for most, if not all, of the high reelection rates seen in recent years (Stone 187). Strategic retirement, or the practice of incumbents retiring instead of facing an unfavorable election cycle, is an accepted and measurable phenomenon. There is widespread disagreement on how this effect exaggerates the incumbent advantage, however. The theory that drives this idea is built on the notion that, through careful research and calculation, incumbents can accurately predict the outcome of an election before the peak campaign season has even begun. While
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A large part of its attractiveness is in its simplicity. If the problem is that legislators remain in office too long, the reasoning goes, then the clear solution is to place a hard limit on the number of years a House member or senator can serve. While the thought of ditching “career politicians” for noble “citizen legislators” seems a solution, this response both fails to deal with the issue at hand and has possibly disastrous consequences for the legislature as a whole (Mann 124). This breakdown occurs on two levels. For one, incumbents who are limited in their terms are still incumbents, and would still possess many of the advantages that incumbents today. For example, it is only reasonable to expect that a representative running for a second term would abuse his or her franking privilege in similar ways to a representative running for his or her fifth. Parties would remain inclined to support their incumbents in primaries and general elections. The presumed benefit of having mandatory turnover, that better candidates would result from turning out the entrenched incumbents, also doesn’t hold up to empirical scrutiny. Though this country has never instituted term limits on a national scale, twenty-three states implemented limits on their representatives before the practice was struck down by the Supreme Court (Mann 125). Though …show more content…
Proponents of the frank often point to regulations on the use of franking for mass mailings, particularly the prohibition on using franking for the direct purpose of soliciting votes and the injunction against using franking privilege in time leading up to an election. When subjected to simple scrutiny, the arguments in favor of the frank fall apart. The motivations of legislators in some cases may indeed be noble, but the primary use case for the frank is much different than the ideal that advocates would like to project. When one looks at the numerous massive, unsolicited mail campaigns designed as one-way communication, it becomes easy to see how franking in action bears strikingly little resemblance to the individually-written replies to constituent letters that advocates like to portray. It is this perversion of the franking privilege that unbalances the electoral process by reducing the cost of reelection campaigns. However, beneficial as it might be, removing the frank has proved difficult. The trouble with getting meaningful franking reform passed is that, in many cases, legislators “pay lip service to limiting or eliminating franking” while continuing to exploit and protect the system as it exists (Sellers 132). In addition, current jurisprudence on the subject has created a doctrine of “government speech” which makes it
A large part of its attractiveness is in its simplicity. If the problem is that legislators remain in office too long, the reasoning goes, then the clear solution is to place a hard limit on the number of years a House member or senator can serve. While the thought of ditching “career politicians” for noble “citizen legislators” seems a solution, this response both fails to deal with the issue at hand and has possibly disastrous consequences for the legislature as a whole (Mann 124). This breakdown occurs on two levels. For one, incumbents who are limited in their terms are still incumbents, and would still possess many of the advantages that incumbents today. For example, it is only reasonable to expect that a representative running for a second term would abuse his or her franking privilege in similar ways to a representative running for his or her fifth. Parties would remain inclined to support their incumbents in primaries and general elections. The presumed benefit of having mandatory turnover, that better candidates would result from turning out the entrenched incumbents, also doesn’t hold up to empirical scrutiny. Though this country has never instituted term limits on a national scale, twenty-three states implemented limits on their representatives before the practice was struck down by the Supreme Court (Mann 125). Though …show more content…
Proponents of the frank often point to regulations on the use of franking for mass mailings, particularly the prohibition on using franking for the direct purpose of soliciting votes and the injunction against using franking privilege in time leading up to an election. When subjected to simple scrutiny, the arguments in favor of the frank fall apart. The motivations of legislators in some cases may indeed be noble, but the primary use case for the frank is much different than the ideal that advocates would like to project. When one looks at the numerous massive, unsolicited mail campaigns designed as one-way communication, it becomes easy to see how franking in action bears strikingly little resemblance to the individually-written replies to constituent letters that advocates like to portray. It is this perversion of the franking privilege that unbalances the electoral process by reducing the cost of reelection campaigns. However, beneficial as it might be, removing the frank has proved difficult. The trouble with getting meaningful franking reform passed is that, in many cases, legislators “pay lip service to limiting or eliminating franking” while continuing to exploit and protect the system as it exists (Sellers 132). In addition, current jurisprudence on the subject has created a doctrine of “government speech” which makes it