Since we are reforming both the Democrats and Republicans, why not reform the electoral campaigning process?
What would you do to change the media circus it has become? I’ve got a suggestion.
Remove certain parts of the ability of a corporation to be treated as a person. Like their right to political speech. Take away their ability to lobby, and to pay for advertisments.
Anyone else got one?
Candidates can only accept campaign contributions from individuals who live within their state/district. Candidates to be allowed free tv time, and their opponents are allowed sufficient free time for rebuttal. The media to analyze each candidate’s ads and rebuttals for veracity with the same energy their currently use analyzing Tom & Katie’s romance, Oscar nominated movies and or the Super Bowl contenders.
Why not just ban campaign contributions entirely? Campaign contributions are our modern, legal form of bribery.
And elections are won by money – because in the U.S., no matter how persuasive your ideas might be, you can’t hope to win, or even be taken seriously as a potential candidate, unless you have the funding to buy very expensive TV advertising. That’s called the “wealth primary.” (In France, paid campaign ads are not allowed, and every broadcaster is required to allot every candidate in the election an equal amount of air time.)
From The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind (The Free Press, 1995), pp. 256-259 (from before the McCain-Feingold Bill, but I don’t think the picture has changed all that much since it passed):
They don’t come much more libertarian than Goldwater, and even he was appalled at this state of affairs.
From the same book, pp. 311-313:
Most of the world’s democracies have election systems in which private campaign contributions are not allowed to play any significant role in politics, and it seems to work out well enough for them. No voice is stifled, and no voice is artificially amplified by wealthy backers. See these threads:
My current problem with most campaign finance reform, including that awful McCain Bill, is that it reduces free speech by attempting to kill off individual’s right to be heard. I also believe people ought to be able to do what they want with their own money, including giving it to those they like. Don’t forget that many organizations dedicated to raising money from everyday people and donating to political causes, or lobbying themselves, are corporations. Restricting them does kill off one of the biggest ways for ordinary people to be heard.
However, since worry over this is endemic, may I suggest a modest proposal? Create a Congressional Bribery Board. Anyone can donate any amount to the board - with a clear trigger. Anyone who trips the trigger gets the money. Most likely, triggers will include proposing in a specific bill motion. Everyone knows about who gets the which money. No hiding it.
I personally dislike ideas like free TV time. That quickly gets obnoxious, and the regulations become both burdensome and intrusive into private business. Moreover, it often winds up only driving politics off the air, destroying legitimate political expression.
That’s entirely true, smilingbandit, and pretty much the reason of my original proposal.
I know that many lobbying groups, like the NRA, are corporations. The NRA is a decent example of a ‘good’ lobbying group. No matter if you agree with them or not, they have a clear motivation, and they go about it fairly straightforwardly.
The thing is, they don’t need to spend money on people’s campaigns to get them elected. They just have to get their members to vote in the proper way, by education. I think that might offset the lack of lobbying.
Or not. Hm. Still, any refinements on the proposal? Pretty much any restriction on political spending is a restriction on free speech. However, corporations are only persons by legislation, and altering their right to free speech strikes me as something that can be done more freely than by stifling the general right, as McCain-Feingold does. M-F is necessary, but possibly unconstitutional.
So, how would you alter things, in a constitutional way, with minimal legislation and minimal side effects?
:rolleyes: Please do not confuse speech with money. (See above.)
Sorry, buddy, but you put your money where your mouth is. Freedom to spend what you want, where you want, and how you want, is as much speech as anything.
Look. Money is exchanged for labor, generally. Of one kind or another. Now, you can spend that money to hire someone to clean your house for you, or you can clean your house yourself.
You can give the money to a political campaign to pay for speeches, or you can give the speeches yourself.
Either way, it’s about making your voice heard, even if in a tiny amount, on the issues you favor.
While I understand Mr. Lind differs, I fail to be convinced by his argument.
Horseshit. It’s not labor political contributions go to pay for, it’s access. It’s use of a limited resource – airtime, or ad space in the newspapers. Which can be had for nothing else but money. And without which no would-be candidate can hope to be taken seriously. Which means we have a “wealth primary.” Which makes this a plutocracy, not a democracy.
What we need more than anything else is to make it, not merely difficult, but impossible for anyone, including the candidates themselves, to influence the outcome of an election by spending money on it.
Access can be centralized or it can be distributed. You can take an hour and walk the streets handing out Kerry leaflets, or you can pay Kerry an hour’s wages and help him buy a radio ad. It’s the same thing when you get down to it, except for added efficency when consolidated.
Hm. Buckley v. Valeo, hm? I reject that the decision was ill-considered from a single say-so.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/americas/2000/us_elections/glossary/a-b/649942.stm
So, it was in reaction to a campaign finance law, specifically.
Mm-hm. Able to drown out…
Nah. It can’t drown messages out. That’s what samizdat is for. And if you don’t think samizdat can shake an election, you’re wrong. It worked in the 70s, if not well, and with the Net, it’s kicking ass all over the place.
The thing is, all you need to do is get your message to one man who is read widely. It may not mean you’ll win, but it does mean you’ll get heard.
The first order of election reform is allowing the Clean Money option of public funding. We use tax dollars to run elections anyway; in the long run equal funding will bring down the cost of the campaigning process. It has worked in Arizona and Maine, where candidates have the option of accepting public funding and use no other money in their campaigns. Vermont, Massachusetts, New Mexico and North Carolina have also just adopted the process.
Instead of spending time raising funding they simply go out and meet the people, many more people than they do when beholden to lobbyists. They are also seen as more accountable to the people since it’s on their dime. If a candidate with private funding tries to out-spend them, they are given matching funds up to 5 or 6 times the original amount. While their opposition needs to spend more time to raise more funds (unless they are using their own money), the clean money candidates continue to meet with only voters, not funders. And often, the first question they ask voters when up against a privately funded candidate is, “Why does my opponent have to hide behind large money interests?” or “Why does my opponent feel they need to buy this election?”, a message people seem to be responding strongly to.
The results thus far are that more people are coming out to vote, and the clean money candidates are winning the lion’s share of offices. Some reasons given are that the candidates are not beholden to a few special interests, that campaigns are less caustic, and that there is a larger field to choose from. Unchallenged seats are becoming rare in Arizona and Maine as public funding allows for more competition. It also provides a level playing field, candidates get the same amount of money; one can get an idea of how well they manage the same funding as their competitors should one get better coverage of their campaign. It would provide fewer opportunities to out-smear an opponent and promote greater need to focus on the issues at hand instead. People may also be more likely to vote someone out of office who came in on tax payer money should they not do their job adequately; it gives a greater assurance of accountability as those running for office are not first ‘blessed’ by major money donors.
Clean Money campaigns also makes it possible for qualified people to participate who do not have deep pockets, or who cannot afford mortgage their house to fund a run for office instead of only those whose fundraising prowess is at the top of their resume. Go to this .pdfdocument and find the word “results” for a quick summary of how it has worked so far.
We also need a federal mandate for independent, non-partisan election committees that run the entire election process rather than putting powerful political figures in charge of the election process in any given state.
Hm. Now, THAT’s interesting, Snag. Anyone have any information on this movement?
Didn’t my links work for you?
Rather, does anyone have any information on how this has worked in other states, on public discourse on this, do we have any other advocates for or against this, etc?
The links worked, I just want other perspectives.
:rolleyes: Rolleyes right back atcha. Don’t insult me.
McCain-Feingold deals in a lot more than just money. Or at least, a lot more than money directly. IIRC (no cite), one court even demanded some relatively unknwn radio personalities to count their promotion of one canidate as financial contributions. In America, you now have to pay to say your piece on your own terms, and possibly websites.
But in any case, so what if people give their money out? Ultimately, on any side of any equation, you’re going to get a lot of rich and poor folks.
I notice that Democrats often insist that the Republicans are the “party of big money,” despite facts. Financial evidence suggests that Democrats tend to get a fair number of very small donations and a good number of extremely large ones - because they have the direct backing of some majorly rich people. Republicans get a lot more of their funding directly from middle-class voters, or from conservative-friendly interest groups, themselves supported primarily by the middle class.
So, to be honest, I find it really insulting to hear liberals talk about how “money influences politics.” It would be a lot less so if this weren’t from the same group in which multimillionaires pledge their support publicly.
I should probably state that in my opinion, McCain and Feingold violated the dignity of their position, and Bush his oath of office, as did everyone who voted it for it.
Not a good cite. Nothing in it in any way demonstrates how application of McCain-Feingold to the Internet “reduces free speech by attempting to kill off individual’s right to be heard.”
And, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am not defending McCain-Feingold, which is a half-assed solution. I want a system like they have in France, where paid political advertising is illegal, period. Why do people like the author of this WSJ piece keep insisting it is “naive” to think you can ban money from politics, when other countries have demonstrated it can be done quite effectively?
:dubious: Because it produces a situation where the rich, as a group, wield political power far out of proportion to their numbers. I hope you will not dispute that that is, in and of itself, a Bad Thing.
Cite?
In my judgment, both parties are guilty here, but not equally. The Democrats are the party of big money and the Pubs are the party of even bigger money. (See Lind’s discussion above.)
So? Ya gotta play the system we’ve got now, as it is, if you want to change it. There would be absolutely nothing hypocritical about George Soros donating a million dollars to a campaign fund and, in the next breath, demanding legislation to ban the practice.
BTW, smiling bandit, you still haven’t answered: If other countries can keep money out of electoral politics, and make it work, and remain functioning democracies, and not, by any reasonable definition, limit anyone’s “freedom of speech” – and many democracies have accomplished all of that – then why can’t such a system work here?
The Elf-Aquitaine scandal has shown that, even with its campaign financing rules, France hasn’t succeeded in getting corporate money out of politics.
Cite?