This is interesting btw:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29548638

The reasons for leaving their seats mid-term were:

Phil Woolas(L) - Election result was controversially invalidated after he was ruled to have made false statements about his opponent during the campaign (the defeated Lib Dem was seen to be a sore loser and lost by a bigger margin in the by-election).

Eric Illsley(L) - Sent to prison for expenses fraud.

Sir Peter Soulsby(L) - Resigned to fight for the job of Mayor of Leicester (a weird decision if you ask me, he must have been making way for some well-connected young thruster).

Gerry Adams(SF) - Resigned so he could fight for a seat in the Irish parliament instead. Nobody from Sinn Fein has ever taken their seat though, so it made little difference.

David Cairns(L) - Died.

Alan Keen(L) - Died.

Marsha Singh(L) - Resigned on health grounds. This resulted in odious huckster George Galloway winning the seat.

Alun Michael(L) - Resigned to run for Police and Crime Commissioner in South Wales (???).

Louise Mensch(C) - Resigned for personal reasons that not everybody really believes.

Tony Lloyd(L) - Another who resigned to run for a PCC job, the fool.

Malcolm Wicks(L) - Died.

Sir Stuart Bell(L) - Died.

Denis MacShane(L) - Resigned after another expenses scandal.

Chris Huhne(LD) - Sent to prison for perverting the course of justice after he tried to get his (now ex) wife to take the rap for speeding violations.

Martin McGuinness(SF) - Just resigned, no explanation given in the article. He's another Sinn Fein member though and has a proper job in Ulster so may have just decided he could no longer be bothered with it.

David Miliband(L) - Resigned to take a up a well-paid job as head of the International Rescue Committee (Thunderbirds are go). Basically he couldn't stand to be around his little brother any longer.

Paul Goggins(L) - Died.

Patrick Mercer(C) - Resigned after being caught in a sting accepting money to ask questions in Parliament.

Jim Dobbin(L) - Died.

Douglas Carswell(C) - Resigned to trigger a by-election after he switched parties.

Mark Reckless(C) - Ditto (this one has yet to be fought).

So we have 6 deaths, 4 scandals and 5 people resigning to take up other jobs. This seems to make up most of them. The two Tories who have stood down in order to fight their seats immediately afterwards as UKIP candidates are very unusual, that rarely happens to say the least. What's really interesting to note here is how fortunate the two coalition parties have been. There's only 4 Tories and 1 Lib Dem on that list, which accounts for less than a quarter of the by-elections which will have been fought since 2010 despite the two parties between them having a clear majority of the seats.

I see. Of course, they usually don't raid Congress that much for cabinet members. Obama (this isn't criticism of him) seems to have appointed more members of Congress to his cabinet than previous presidents (at least two or three I can think of). The VP (not a "cabinet" member per se, but a member of his administration, though in theory the VP is elected by the people along with the prez.), Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and....someone else I forget who.

Wow....especially the one about foisting his legal obligations for speeding tickets on his wife. LOL.

Chuck Hagel was a senator wasn't he ?

But yes, you're right that they tend not to tap Congress too much. Which is odd when you think about it. Long-standing members of Congress have a wealth of experience which you'd think would make them ideal for government jobs. Instead you tend to find that the senior administration jobs are all filled by people who have never had to face an election in their lives. There are pros and cons to this I suppose, but it's odd nevertheless.

Yes in some ways. Though that is probably because you're used to a system in which the entire cabinet are members of Parliament. If you go back into American history there are interesting tidbits involving the Cabinet; it does seem that, until the mid 20th century, when the cabinet got BIG, the president's cabinet were more political. In fact, Seward (Secretary of State for Lincoln) was a rival candidate with Lincoln for the 1860 Republican nomination. This was pretty common until the mid to late 20th century.

Interestingly enough, the post of Secretary of State---and NOT the Vice-Presidency, as one would imagine---was considered to be, not only the President's "right hand man", but the republican equivalent to an "heir apparent" to the chief executive. (The John Adams presidency being the exception.) As follows: James Madison was Secretary of State for Pres. Thomas Jefferson for the whole time of Jefferson's presidency (1801-1809), and then was elected President to succeed him (1809-1817). Madison's 2nd Secretary of State (from 1811-1817), James Monroe, was, again, president right afterwards (1817-1825). Monroe's Secretary of State was John Quincy Adams (Pres. from 1825-1829). But I think the election of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) ended this.

Henry Clay had been Speaker of the House before being the second Secretary of State for Quincy Adams. I imagine that is because Clay, coming in fourth place, helped (as Speaker of the House) to broker the 1824 election for President when the electoral college deadlocked, preventing any tragic repeat of the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 (when the House had to go through 36 ballots before Jefferson was elected President).

In 1853, a Democratic senator from Mississippi was appointed Secretary of War by president Franklin Pierce (Dem, 1853-57)...his name was Jefferson Davis.

Theodore Roosevelt had been Governor of New York for a bit (after being McKinley's Asst. Secretary of the Navy). But of course he was passed over for Secretary of War, which he would have preferred to being governor, and the conservative wing of the Republican Party forced him to accept the Vice-Presidency (which kind of backfired on them!)

Ok yeah you get the point. So yeah, in the earlier years, a cabinet could be full of the president's rivals, as I think the Lincoln cabinet was.

But today, instead of fellow politicians, cabinet members (and especially the myriad of other executive appointees) are usually what one might call a technocrat without a power base. This is good and bad.

The advantage to this is, instead of a minister who was appointed because the PM only has so many associates senior enough to be in the cabinet (out of the 326+ members required for a "majority"...correct me if I'm wrong about this), the President of the United States can pick any American qualified to be the appointee to the cabinet and other senior executive posts, which gives him at least some more options. He could scour the universities for a professor who is an actual expert in national security, or a former military officer....anyone without too many inconvenient skeletons in the closet to get by the members of the Senate.

You once said that our cabinet members and executive officers don't get grilled by Congress much once their confirmation hearings are over. That's actually untrue: they get raked over the coals every time a particular committee of the Senate or the House feels like handing them a subpoena to summon them to explain this or that. Or if a committee of Congress having to do with their line of work (e.g., Senate foreign relations committee for example summoning the Secretary of State, House Judicial Committee summoning the Attorney-General, etc, etc) needs "expert" testimony on this or that sort of legislation. That's an advantage, as far as I can see. And there are some presidential appointments---not just the cabinet members---who are filled "internally" by people who have worked within that system. Like the Chairman of our central bank (Federal Reserve System). Usually that's an insider, even someone who's already on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System. A long-time spy or administrator at CIA to be its Director. A well-known prosecutor to be the Director of the FBI or Attorney-General.

The downside: as non-politicians, being raked over the coals by members of Congress, they might not know how to really deal with them properly (like, oops, they say too much and the president now has to deal with a scandal of some sort because one of his advisers mouthed off.) So you so have quite a point about lack of political experience. And of course, few Americans, even well-informed ones, could actually name or even recognize members of the Cabinet. I have no clue, nor do I care (for the most part) who the hell is the Secretary for Health and Human Services (HHS) or Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

But either which way, whether our modern presidential system, where they're usually at least sort of technocrats with expertise in that area, or a modern parliamentary system where they are colleagues of the head of government, rather than subordinates (in theory.....for both systems) there's still advantages I can see to both. Though neither method functions in practice as it does on paper.

Chuck Hagel, though, yeah I think he was a senator or member of the House, before appointment.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com ... teach-u-s/

Now that another midterm has come and gone....
apparently 54 Billion$ was spent . And most of that came from o.5% of the population.
Does that feel like democracy?

As soon as a congressman gets elected they have to start raising money for the next election, unless they are unopposed. And an awful lot of congressmen are unopposed... because the high cost of running keeps interested people on the sidelines ...
According to Lawrence Lessig there are two proposals to take money out of politics alive. The republican one is tp provide every voter with vouchers. The voter can sign those vouchers over to qualified (registered?) candidates. And this is the only money the candidate can spend in the election.
This system would be paid for by the elimination of donations to political candidates. That money is tax deductible and therefore tax revenues would increase as a result of the elimination of tax deductible political donations...

I think its an interesting idea. And perhaps one whose tiime has come.

Since gridlock is not going to be ended by the recent midterms, Obama has a veto that he'll use often, perhaps one more change needs to be made. Hold elections for Federal office every four years, making Senators and Congressmen's terms 4 years. And making every election like a Presidential election... Higher turn out, and a genuine battle of political platforms . Where the winning ideas may have a chance at achieving a majority and actually doing something with it...

I suggested amending the length of the terms myself way back in the early part of this thread. Two years is a ludicrously short time to be elected for. There's a case for leaving the Senate alone, but certainly the time has come for making the House serve for a 4 year term concurrent with the Presidential elections.

Less than 1% of Americans Contribute 80% of Funds

Less than 0.5 percent of the U.S. population contributed $200 or more to federal candidates in 2008, or 82 percent of total itemized contributions.
Less than 0.1 percent of Americans contributed $2,300 or more in 2008, or 60 percent of the total.
Approximately 4 percent of Americans made contributions in any amount in 2008.
Men contributed 68 percent of all money to federal candidates, compared with 32 percent from women.

here's the web site i got info from.
http://www.acrreform.org/research/money ... who-gives/

The idea of increasing the terms of office of members of the House of Representatives is a decent idea in theory, but in practice would result in disaster, discord and (quite possibly) a dictatorial presidency. The United States Government would be less responsive to public opinion than ever, more dependent on corporate and special interests than before, and the attempt to create electoral harmony between the President and the House of Representatives, or even with both houses of Congress, would not only be a failure but would also increase the power of the presidency in a rather disturbing manner.

I am currently doing a little bit of research to find out if you're right about synchronizing the election of four-year congressmen and the presidency would result in less gridlock most of the time. If you are correct, then much of the time, the majority party of the House of Representatives elected in the same election cycle as that of the President, should both equate. I am actually making a table that demonstrates the data, which will show whether the President and the House (and even throwing in the Senate for good measure) are the same. So, that should bear out whether your idea is valid or not. Let me know if you want to see it. Should be interesting.

hacker

The United States Government would be less responsive to public opinion than ever, more dependent on corporate and special interests than before, and the attempt to create electoral harmony between the President and the House of Representatives, or even with both houses of Congress, would not only be a failure but would also increase the power of the presidency in a rather disturbing manner

The timing of elections does not affect impact of the corporate/ special interests. The need for massive amounts of money to win primaries, and then general elections is why corporate interests/ special interests have influence.
If anything, by synchronizing all congressional elections with the Presidential term you eliminate half the congressional elections.
By combining all the Senate terms, and synchronizing you respond to the national will . Today, senators that are protected from a presidential election by their longer term, owe nothing to the electorate and can respond to the corporate and special interests that funded them without regard to the general electorate.

So far, you're partially right....but not enough to conclusively say that giving congressmen a 4 year (not two year) election date coinciding with that of the President would produce a more harmonious result (e.g., reduce gridlock). Between 2012 and 1940, which equals 19 presidential elections in all, 3 elections resulted in "Senate Only", (the President is opposite part of the House but same party as the Senate after the election), 11 elections resulted in both chambers being the same party as the presidency

Of course, there are flaws to this, and it would help to show how much of a Majority was present in either chamber, or by how many popular or electoral votes the victorious President and his party won by....but I'd have to make a very very large spreadsheet for that, a table won't do, and Redscape does not allow for attaching spreadsheets to a message. (Course, I could do a "landscape" view of a table done on Word.....) so we must factor into your theory....well, a lotta crap we really can't do in one table. So no matter what, the theory, as well as the results of my brief but accurate-as-possible survey, will be oversimplifications!

Today, senators that are protected from a presidential election by their longer term, owe nothing to the electorate and can respond to the corporate and special interests that funded them without regard to the general electorate.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And by extending the terms of a representative as well, you'd do precisely the same thing to them that you just said about the senators!!!! You see?

And also, Sassenach said he wouldn't touch the Senate if I remember correctly....

OK I have my results, but I have not "checked" them (looked a 2nd time at the results, one by one). I will do that later, when my eyes are less....a mess like they are right now.

So far, the theory that a 4 year term for representative would bring the executive and legislative branches in sync more (at least produce less gridlock) is PARTIALLy correct.

But it still leaves some unanswered questions, and the idea itself presents, as I have mentioned, some problems. But at any rate, here is the data showing whether the American People elected senators and representatives of the same party as to the Presidency (whether we elected the same party to each chamber of Congress as to the White House during those presidential election years).

Because this chart shows no midterm elections (every other congressional election result, since we're talking about changing their terms to coincide with presidential years) it is still possible that we could have done the opposite of what we did in the 4-year (presidential-coinciding) elections: we could have elected one or more of a different party to either or both chambers of Congress during the presidential election, but then, at the midterms, swapped parties? Like, do the opposite of what we just did on November 4, 2014? (Though unlikely, it's mathematically possible, from an apolitical standpoint, that we could have kept the Senate Democratic and changed the House to a GOP majority; thereby having all three elements Democratic instead of both chambers Republican whilst having a Democratic President? Has anybody thought of that?)

And here is my chart, without checking. I wanted to release it ASAP but I'm pretty sure I have got it right.

And...................OH FOR CRISSSSAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT WILL NOT ALLOW A .DOCX FILE!!!!!!!!

hacker

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And by extending the terms of a representative as well, you'd do precisely the same thing to them that you just said about the senators!!!! You see?

I appreciate the work you are doing to consider the value of a coordinated eelction
The coordination of terms is only a part answer....
And the part that says that the government would have a 4 year cycle where all three component parts of the government are coordinated in election. This doesn't guarantee that one party would control all three and have the ability to govern effectively.
But it does provide a better opportunity.

The major part of making representatives more responsive to the electorate is to ensure the electorate has more power. Currently the cost of getting elected makes representatives (Senators or congressmen) responsive to the 0.5% of the populace that provides them significant contributions . If each member of the electorate had vouchers that represented the only way members could finance their campaigns... then the corporations and special interests lose their out sized power..
Imagine how congressmen would respond to the needs for health care of their constituents if they weren't beholden to the insurance companies, and particularly big pharma for such a large portion of their campaign funding. Instead that funding came from people who's interest was limited to affordability, access and quality ..... not profits.

government are coordinated in election. This doesn't guarantee that one party would control all three and have the ability to govern effectively.

Precisely. It does not. Despite the data that shows most Congresses coincide fully with the President during election years, guaranteeing a Congress and President of the same party via Sassenach's suggested amendment, it could be solved without such an amendment. And there have been times when our government HAS been split and produced decent results. Not unlike the "cohabitation" in the French government (though they use a slightly different model that actually produces a president even more powerful than the American one). And of course, there are complaints of "rubber stamping" when government is not divided.

And of course, what if the American people realize they've made a mistake, and want to correct it two years into a four year congressional term? The President and his agenda become unpopular, and there is no way to force him to come to a compromise, without having to wait another two years? If the problem Ricky's talking about could be solved, corporate donors having "bigger votes" than the average voter thanks to their money and influence, there would be no need for such a four year cycle for congressmen. That part of the problem could be solved other ways.

Maryland does precisely this: in this state, EVERYBODY is elected at the same time, just like that (though it coincides with federal midterms, so we just did it this Tuesday). The Governor, the Comptroller, the Attorney General, all 141 delegates, all 47 senators, and most county offices. And believe me it causes more problems than it solves, even if we do usually have an overwhelmingly Democratic House and Senate, and a Democratic Governor, Comptroller and Attorney General. Because it is practically a one-party state (both chambers of the General Assembly were roughly 70% Democrat, 30% Republican), the ruling party is riddled with factions.

Although on Tuesday, the Arab Spring came to Annapolis: we elected a Republican governor. The last one was former congressman Robert Ehrlich eight years ago (1999-2003). There had been no GOP governor in the State House since Jan 7, 1969, when Spiro Agnew resigned to accept the Vice-Presidency. If you count Larry Hogan, who will likely serve one term himself, there have been six out of 20 Republican governors since 1900 and only one, 1951-59, was actually re-elected (2 term limit). They might as well put the word "National" before the name of the majority party in Maryland....if you know what I'm talking about.

So you think it's a healthy thing that Congressmen have to face re-election every two years ? Really ?