Starting in the last half of the 20th century, Americans have become ever more cynical and apathetic in their attitude toward election politics. 50% of us, fully one half , of Americans don’t vote. And to make things worse, those who do vote, continue to blindly reelect Congress at a 95% reelection rate, regardless of the corruption, bad fiscal policies, and awful laws which are enacted.

All is not lost however. It is possible to use this huge army of disgruntled non-voters to rejuvenate our Congress and our country. All we have to do is convince them of a winning issue they would very much want to vote on.

There are at least three aspects of this situation, which “we the people” can and should exploit:

First, ‘we the people’ still have the vote , let’s use it;
Second, fifty percent of us are turned off, and don’t vote, which amounts to a powerful constituency;
Third, this non-voting 50%, all by themselves, acting together, could throw ALL the bums out!

In any given Congressional election, if all the usual non-voters voted, and only for challengers, the challengers would sweep the field.

The very powerful motivator in those three points is that a great many of those people who don’t vote are people who hate the professional politicians and the system, and, if and when they did vote, would vote almost unanimously for such things as Term Limits, Balanced Budgets, No Earmarks, etc, etc.

Therefore, we must wake up that sleeping giant called ‘non-voters’, and get THEM to realize that
they and they alone have the power to make an earthshaking difference in American political history.

Simply by voting a solid NEVER REELECT ticket, regardless of party, they would cause a revolution rivalling 1776.

An interesting and attractive feature of this strategy is that it makes no difference which party, or which issue, or which candidate, these returning non-voters voted for, so long as they actually voted, and only for challengers, NOT for any ANY INCUMBENT. In effect, they would be creating a “voter-imposed term limit”, on a one-term Congress.

If enough of those 50% non-voters got this message and decided to vote, even if “regular” voters didn’t change their bad “reelection” voting habits, there would be a flood of rejected long-termers out of the Congress. America would be changed immediately and forever. Never again would professional politicians ignore voters in favor of reelection by the special interests. And we might finally get some constitutional amendment proposals, such as for term limits and balanced budgets.

In fact, that might spell the beginning of the end of career politicians in Congress.

However...the missing ingredient for such a strategy of course is the advertising money that would be required to reach and arouse those ‘non-voters’. Since most ‘non-voters’ probably don’t even listen to the “main stream media”, it will take special efforts to even get in touch with them.

If any of you who see or hear this message know of any ‘deep-pocket’ individuals or organizations who might be interested in trying this particular tactic of rousing that huge group of non-voters to come out at least once or twice to show that it will work to “throw the bums out”, please bring this idea to their attention.

I’m Nelson Lee Walker of tenurecorrupts.com

An incumbent who seeks re-election cannot freely vote his conscience, or his principles, for fear that he is going to offend some slice of the electorate, reducing his chances of re-election.

Obviously, one way to correct this problem is to reduce or eliminate eligibility for re-election. In other words, establish either a one or two term limit on all offices in government.

In all the the noise among the pundits, editorialists, and bloggers about the significance of any election, nowhere does anyone address the the most obvious characteristic - that the bulk of the failings of our American electoral system is due to careerism and long tenure in the body politic, particularly in Congress.

No one has stood up and yelled “It’s about re-elections, stupid! Not issues!"

No one seems to recognize that, in the desperate struggle to hold on to their extremely ‘cushy’ jobs, career politicians will vote, not on principle or merit, but on their ‘re-election odds’ only.

Those that do it successfully, go on to lifelong tenure (e.g. Byrd, Kennedy,Stevens, Domenici, et al). Those who try to hold to principle invariably serve very short terms.

In other words, if your first concern is re-election, rather than the what is best for the country, you reap the rewards of a long tenure. Is this any way to run a country?

The fundamental reason we need Congressional Term Limits is simply that Congress is no longer doing its job. Instead, it is working very hard at keeping its job.

Of the many hot issues actually ‘debated’ by Congress and passed, most have been so chewed up, amended, and emasculated, that they are often not worth the paper they are written on. Congress will do anything it can to avoid making clear-cut decisions to get good legislation, in order not to offend or lose the voters they need for re-election.

Some people would say that’s the way a democracy works, and to some degree that's true, but that's an oversimplification. Rather, what we are seeing is a Congressional class which is overwhelmingly committed to re-election first, all other considerations, especially good governance, last. This is true on both sides of the aisle.

The best evidence of this is the fact that in two recent (‘02, ‘04)elections, Congressional incumbents won re-election at a 99% rate. Before 50 years ago, that rate was about 50-60%. Do you really believe that 99% of incumbents deserved re-election ? In two successive elections?

The ‘06 election was merely a bump in the road. Things have not changed. A great majority of the really long termers survived. They always will, thanks to gerrymandered districts, name recognition, and other incumbent advantages. We still have a virtually permanent Congress.

How this has come about can be understood by examining Congressional voting patterns on the major issues in our current political environment, allof which are now routine, and all of which have arisen during the last part of the 20th century, as Congress has learned how to ‘game the system’.

For example, and the following applies to both sides of the aisle :

•They don’t reform Soc Sec to get personal retirement accounts. They might lose voters for re-election

•They don’t reform health care to get personal medical accounts. They might lose voters for re-election

•They don’t stop earmarks, because they want to spend federal money for local votes for re-election

•They don’t vote school choice, because they want teacher’s union money for re-election

•They don’t vote for tort reform, because they want lawyer money for re-election

•They don’t vote for right-to-work, because they want union money for re-election

•They don’t want computer neutral redistricting, because they want safe seats for re-election

•They don’t deregulate campaign financing with instant disclosure, because they lose contributors for re-election

•They won’t lower taxes, because they won’t be able to vote irresponsible ‘goodies’ for re-election

•They won’t reduce the size of government, because that would reduce their control of voters for re-election

•Last,but not least, Congressional office has become a career livelihood, which is in itself, a conflict of interest, because incumbents become more interested in holding on to the job than passing good legislation. Unlimited reelections should not be allowed.

A great many state and local legislative offices are already term limited. Why not Congress ???

Nelson Lee Walker
tenurecorrupts.com