It’s about an 82% number nationwide. Again, as I said, it’s about 84% according to the latest Rasmussen poll in Alaska. There’s a reason why so many members of Congress act like they’re invincible, they’re not really accountable to the voters they’re supposed to represent, and that’s because they are almost impossible to defeat.
Last cycle, 100% of US Senate incumbents won, about 95% of the House incumbents won, and even that number is inflated because of the 10 who lost their general elections, a number of them lost to other House incumbents that they had been redistricted in with. So even when incumbents lose, it often takes another incumbent to beat them.
At U.S. Term Limits, we basically believe it’s healthy for voters to have the opportunities to fill open seats. We believe it’s healthy for candidates to bring the state experience with them to DC, that you need that fresh blood.
And I’ll speak very quickly to the Article Five portion of this, because while it’s an Article Five application, this issue is never going to a convention, our goal is not a convention. We’re gonna do what’s worked for the last 240 years, and that is to use the process to pressure Congress to write the amendment itself, send it back to you all for ratification at a later date. But we know that Congress will never limit its own terms until the states force them to. So it’ll be state pressure through this process that forces Congress to act.
I don’t say that what we’re doing here won’t take effect for kind of a while. We have a number of states to go. The process will take some time. And we’re about 99.99% sure that when Congress finally write something, they’re gonna grandfather themselves in.
So if you do happen to have a member of Congress your particularly fond of what we’re doing here today isn’t going to affect them, but it will fix the system in the long term. Fixing Congress will be good for America, great for Alaska. So really on behalf of the thousands of Alaskans who have signed our petition, signed up for alerts and our urging passage of this respectfully ask you to support this important resolution.