On Election Day, we're told that every vote counts. But long before we cast our ballots, the major political parties stack the decks in their own favor by drawing districts during once-a-decade reapportionment. This process, known as gerrymandering, protects incumbents and party favorites while discouraging others from running for office. Craig Ladwig of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation and Rob Richie and Steven Hill of the Center for Voting and Democracy examine this lack of competition and what can be done about it. Craig Ladwig Ladwig is executive director of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. We need to be reminded every generation or so that democracy is a means of succession, not a guarantor of wise government. And as we near the midpoint of the current gerrymandering cycle, there is no need to wait for the automatic election of legislative incumbents to face a sad reality: Democracy in Indiana isn't even performing its minimal function. A candidate in a recent Indianapolis primary summed it up for The Star's Michele Solida with this profound if unwitting understatement: "It's too bad there isn't more competition -- so much is at stake." In the 2002 primary elections, 215 of the possible 250 primary races were uncontested. In the general election that year, incumbents were seriously challenged in only 11 House races and two Senate races. Last spring, 170 of the 200 House primary races and 46 of the 50 Senate races were uncontested, Solida noted. The probability of an incumbent victory here, even in a district where demographic and political trends might predict a toss-up, has been calculated as high as 97 percent, according to John Carey, Richard Niemi and Lynda Powell, authors of "Incumbency and the Probability of Reelection in State Legislative Elections." The cynic might conclude that we would be better off -- that is, power would be in the hands of someone more sympathetic to our views -- if we took our chances on the genetic whim of monarchy. Incumbents tell us there is an explanation: The electorate recognizes good government when it sees it. Political scientists and economists, however, have other explanations. First, the courts long ago allowed legislative bodies to reward political factions and thereby enabled pork-barrel politics. More recently, incumbents began granting themselves taxpayer-funded perquisites that now allow them to campaign for re-election 365 days a year. In addition, campaign-spending limits have had the unintended effect of entrenching incumbents further by excluding political outsiders who are left with no way to raise these or other complaints. The explanation that should bother us most, though, the one suggesting the depth of the political corruption, is gerrymandering. It is a historic process that has defied reform because it favors incumbency generally even above political affiliation. A recent New York Times editorial updates the technique: "A major reason legislative elections are becoming a charade is that the parties that control the redistricting process now routinely follow the dictum of 'pack, crack and pair.' They pack voters from the other party into a single district and crack centers of opposition strength, dispersing opponents to districts where they will be in the minority. They redraw lines so two incumbents from the other party will wind up in one district, fighting for a single seat. Using powerful computers, line-drawers can now determine, with nearly scientific precision, how many loyal party voters need to be stuffed into any given district to make it impregnable." By "packing, cracking and pairing," party leaders prosper in two ways at the expense of democratic integrity: They ensure themselves continued office, with most districts drawn to guarantee incumbency for many elections to come. They then can command favors from the congressional delegation (grateful for favorable district boundaries) when it comes time to open the billion-dollar federal pork barrel. "A major element in the job security of incumbents," concludes political scientist Edward Tufte "is their ability to exert significant control over the drawing of district boundaries; indeed, some recent redistricting laws have come to be described as Incumbent Survival Acts." What all that means is this: The type of election campaign that for many Hoosiers epitomizes democracy at work -- the campaign where well-defined political opinions are argued on a level field of public opinion -- is becoming a political curiosity. There are only two proposals that fully address the power of incumbency. Both of them, alas, are quixotic. The first is to reform Indiana government en masse to shrink opportunities and rewards for such systemic mischief. Government is the largest employer in many Indiana communities. It also is the biggest contributor to political campaigns (in the form of constituency services, free media and other incumbent benefits). Failing a reduction in government's role, there are term limits -- not a reform so much as an acknowledgment that the system is broken. Reform movements in the past were able to apply term limits after abuses of power in such offices as sheriff, mayor and governor. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that legislators will act to limit their own office. Political scientists generally dismiss term limits as a desperate last chance at stopping party leaders from becoming a permanent ruling class, noted Eric O'Keefe and Aaron Steelman, writing for Cato Institute in 1997. We are left only with our candidate's lament: It's too bad there isn't more competition -- so much is at stake. Rob Richie and Steven Hill Richie is executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy. Hill is the center's senior analyst. Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau releases new population data, and elected officials in nearly every political jurisdiction in the nation carve up the political landscape into new legislative districts to ensure representatives have an equal number of constituents. Some cities and states have procedures to promote the public interest in this redistricting process, but most do little to prevent the creation of a hodgepodge of districts gerrymandered to protect incumbents and build partisan advantage. With increasingly sophisticated computer software, polling results and demographic data, incumbent legislators quite literally choose the voters before the voters have a chance to choose them. As a result of the redistricting process, most voters are locked into one-party districts where their only real choice at election time is to ratify the incumbent or heir apparent of the party controlling that district. After years of simmering as a backburner concern for wonks and insiders, redistricting has burst onto the national scene in the wake of a sharp rise in non-competitive elections and hardened partisan lines in Congress and many states. Nearly every major newspaper, including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, has called for reforms to provide greater fairness and voter choice, usually based on the criteria-driven process instituted in Iowa in the 1980s. Unlike many reforms, fair redistricting has drawn fervent support from across the spectrum, ranging from conservatives at the Cato Institute to moderate Republicans such as Iowa Rep. Jim Leach and Arizona Sen. John McCain and Democrats such as former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer. In 2001, both Republicans and Democrats elevated incumbent protection in redistricting to new levels. In California, for example, incumbent U.S. House Democrats paid $20,000 apiece to a redistricting consultant -- the brother of an incumbent -- to have "designer districts" drawn for them. Republicans went along with this cozy arrangement in exchange for their own safe seats. The result was an unbroken parade of landslide wins, with no challenger to an incumbent winning even 40 percent of the vote. Nationally, only four challengers defeated House incumbents, the fewest in history, while fewer than one in 10 races were won by competitive margins inside 55 percent to 45 percent. The lockdown of the U.S. House has major repercussions for our political process and representative government. Elected every two years, with representatives closer to the people than senators or the president, the House was designed to reflect the will and different interests of the nation. The reality is far different. Hardly any members can be held electorally accountable, given the paucity of primary challenges (indeed more members have died in office than lost in primaries in the last decade) and lopsided general elections grounded in their incumbency advantages and districts drawn to have a majority of voters backing their party. The growth in seats held by women and people of color has come to a standstill after a sharp rise in 1992, after the last redistricting. Control of the House is nearly as fixed in stone as the routine 98 percent re-election rates. Since 1954, control of the U.S. House has changed just once, when Newt Gingrich and Republicans took over in 1994. Democrats gained a few seats in each election between 1996 and 2000, but Republicans cemented their grip in 2002 after dominating redistricting in several large states. Despite Democrats theoretically needing to pick up only 13 seats to regain the House, few observers believe that possible this decade without a dramatic surge toward Democrats. A win for George W. Bush in 2004 would make it even harder for Democrats, as it likely would lead to a wave of retirements of Democratic members whose only chance at influence is a sympathetic president. Redistricting was a key reason for Republican success in 2002. Although Al Gore won more votes nationwide than George W. Bush in 2000, Bush carried 237 of the current House districts, compared to only 198 for Gore. Gore won more combined votes than Bush in Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but after having unfettered control of redistricting in those states, Republicans now hold a whopping 51 out of 77 seats elected from those areas, including 18 of 25 seats in Florida. Given that Democrats hold a majority of House seats in the remaining 46 states, it's fair to say that the key elections for House control were not in 2002, but in those states' 1998 gubernatorial elections swept by Republicans, who then helped dominate congressional redistricting. With voter turnout plummeting, most of us living in thoroughly noncompetitive districts and the U.S. House gerrymandered so that one party has dominant control, we could cancel most legislative elections and few would notice. In the 1990s, an angry public lashed out by voting overwhelmingly for term limits. Now it's time for a drive to give voters real choices, new voices and fair representation. It won't happen without redistricting reform.