Please explain

[krazykitkat]

I'm not sure if they ever fully explained the midterms on tWW.

Now, I understand that all the House of Reps and about a third of the Senate were up for election? How long are the terms? What happens in 2008? Does the House of Reps go up for election again? Another part of the Senate?

And, sangerin, have you heard about the NSW chapter of Democrats Abroad Australia?

And YAY for South Dakota voting down the abortion ban! Though it's still scary that 45% voted for it.

And on the local front, argh about the non-listing of the cervical cancer vaccine on the PBS. Not that it would give it to me free...they don't seem to think that women over 26 might be virgins. And actually I'm confused as to whether I'll even be allowed to have it (though the way I'm going I won't ever actually need it), they keep saying 12-26. I might ring MBF tomorrow and see whether maybe part of the cost may be covered by them, they do cover non-PBS medications. Because $460 is nearly 2 weeks wages.

But congrats to the Senate on passing the stem cell bill. Interesting that in such a narrow vote, 34-32, apparently 18 of the 21 women voted yes (I think that was the number I heard on the news this morning).

Comments

Congress

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Representatives in the House serve two-year terms, and all the seats are up for election each time. Senators serve six-year terms, and one-third of them are elected in each even-numbered year.
The number of Reps per state is determined by a loosely population based formula; each state gets two Senators.

Re: Congress

[krazykitkat.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

How do they get anything done in the House of Reps? Wouldn't they pretty much be campaigning for half their term?

Re: Congress

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

Answer: Yes.

Re: Congress

[keladryb.livejournal.com]

They're campaigning for their entire term. It wasn't an exageration when a West Wing character claimed he had to raise 10,000 dollars a day from the moment he was sworn in for his reelection campaign.

That being said, it's incredibly difficult to beat an incumbant in the House. Usually, between 93 and 97 percent of incumbant representatives are reelected. This year was something of an anomaly.

Re: Congress

[tangleofthorns.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Once a candidate is elected to Congress, and especially if he wins a second term, it's pretty difficult to unseat him unless he has a personal scandal or his party is facing serious trouble (Watergate, the Reagan backlash of '86, the Clinton backlash of '94, or, well, this year). This is partly because of simple name recognition and even more because gerrymandering districts has made them pretty partisan, so there are plenty of places where no matter what, a challenging Democrat isn't going to have a chance with the district's population.

[melyanna.livejournal.com]

The entire House of Representatives is up for election every two years. (Yes, we're crazy like that.) The districts that the congressmen represent have populations of about 600,000.

Senators serve six-year terms, and a third of them are up at every election. There are two in every state, and as far as I'm aware you never vote for both of your Senators at once. In Illinois, for example, Senator Obama was elected in 2004, we had no Senate race this year, and Senator Durbin will be up for reelection in 2008.

I know how the makeup of Congress was decided, but to be honest I don't how they picked the length of terms; I think the idea was to have one legislative body be more stable while the other was more susceptible to the whims of the populace. (Also, senators used to be elected by state legislations instead of being elected by the general population.) When the Constitution was being written, the larger states wanted representation based on population while the smaller states wanted equal representation for all states regardless of size, and the Connecticut delegation (Connecticut being a state in the middle, population-wise) proposed that they do both.

[furies.livejournal.com]

oh, crazy political systems. the truth is that incumbents are hard to beat - except in midterm elections your second year in office as president. (that's usually when it happens.)

but states like california try to draw their districts so seats are "safe" - this is why a lot of people want term limits on congressional reps - but i think that's dumb. it's hard to unseat someone from a different party - this is often why primary races are so competitive and take up so much money.

i think part of the reason they picked two year terms for the house and six for the senate was both stability and change. they wanted turnover in the house - the ideal was this conception of the "citizen democracy" where your average joe farmer would take two years off from farming, work in government, and then return to their farm without that much of a problem. it was supposed to be very rotating. this, of course, never really happened, but it was a nice idea. then, to balance the constant change of the house, there was the senate, which would have six year terms (and be elected by the state legislatures) who would kind of . . . keep things together. they were supposed to be more like the lawyers and such. the reason for rotating the one-third of the senate is again stability - there are SO MANY rules in the senate, this way there will always be someone that knows something. also, many of the framers were distrustful of the people, and were afraid that in one election year one issue could decide the whole government - sweeping the house, senate and presidency. (that's partly why the senate was supposed to be elected in that way.) at least, okay, hamilton was terrified of this, and fought hard for it.

also, it's important to remember that presidental term limits didn't come around until FDR - term limits are dumb!

the end.