AMERICAN DEMOCRACY TURNED ON ITS HEAD.

Byline: Garrett Biggs Local View

WITH three presidential debates and the vice presidential debate behind us, one question comes to mind: Did the Roman republican form of government fall in one dramatic plunge when Julius Caesar beat Pompeii in the Roman Civil War, or was the republican machinery already crumbling decades before then due to neglect and indifference?

What does ancient history have to do with the United States presidential election? Because our country's Founding Fathers based our republican form of government on what they learned from previous democratic experiences and philosophies, so we should continue to reflect on previous experiences and resurrect one of the forgotten issues of this presidential election: the condition of the United States democracy.

While Bush is spreading democracy to other nations, our own democracy is wasting away. Every time we turn on the TV, sign online or open a newspaper, we find out how competitive this presidential election is. This sounds like a healthy, functioning democracy, but take a closer look. While our presidential race is competitive, American legislative elections today are as competitive as our counterparts in authoritarian China.

The Founding Fathers made members of the House of Representatives face voters every two years for re-election. They made members of the Senate face voters for re-elections every six years. The theory was that the people's immediate concerns would be heard in the House, which has been dubbed ``the body of the people.'' If you have to face re-election every two years, you'd better be on your best behavior or you'll be voted out of office. The Senate, with six-year terms, was made the long-term, stable body, maintaining balance in our government.

But since the 2000 redistricting process, our democratic system has been turned on its head. Members of our country's state legislatures redrew district boundaries for members of the House that increased the number of registered Republican voters for Republican members of Congress, and Democratic members of Congress. This shameless gerrymandering guaranteed job security for members of Congress.

In the 2002 election cycle, 50 of our nation's 435 congressional contests were considered competitive, but only eight of the House members lost their seats to competitors. That's a 98 percent re-election rate. This year, only 29 seats are considered competitive. As long as they can keep from being arrested, members of the House have no worries of losing their seats for not representing the people. Put more acutely to the voter, if your congressman isn't afraid of losing his or her seat, why should he or she listen to you, and why should your vote matter?

This lack of competitive elections has led to a polarized Congress, with conservative Republicans on one side and liberal Democrats on the other. It has reduced independent thought as the representative party leaderships move their blocks of votes like a well-disciplined Roman army. With fewer competitive general elections to take sides in, it has made it more likely that the well-connected, not necessarily the best, candidate wins as special-interest money finds its way into primaries to replace retiring members of Congress.

To bring this problem closer to home, of the meager 29 competitive elections for the House around the country, not one of them is in California. Additionally, California's Legislature is also undemocratic. A generous assessment of state Senate and Assembly seats finds only 6 percent of the seats are competitive. Once a battleground of highly competitive seats on all levels of government, there are now only two worth watching in Los Angeles County - a county of 10 million people! In the San Fernando Valley, what would be the nation's sixth-largest city, there were recently as many as four competitive elections; today there are zero.

Bush and Kerry don't talk about this epidemic mostly because it is not a very sexy topic of discussion. As in ancient Rome, sexier and seemingly more pressing issues of the day attract the attention of our leaders. But as the presidential race began in Iowa, so our leaders must revisit that state for ideas on how to rehabilitate our democracy.

Iowa has a nonpartisan redistricting commission, which is not allowed to gerrymander to favor one party over another. This has created a hotbed of democracy that our Founding Fathers would be proud of. Ten percent of our country's competitive House elections are in the tiny state of Iowa.

Rome's republican government was a shadow of its former self long before Julius Caesar took power. Caesar simply drove the last nail in the coffin of his country's republic; the system was ignored for decades as it slowly crumbled and the republic became something we read about in history books. Our democracy and the freedoms it preserves is what makes America great. Let's hope future history books document America's revival, starting with Iowa's system, rather than letting the sands of time do to us what it did to Rome.