Did you miss the part about the standards being objective and simple?
Perfect solution.
I think it is a great analogy. The distance between the speakers is irrelevant, the reach of each person’s speech is not equal due to their differing wealth. This is a democratic system where (in my opinion) every voter should have equal access in sharing their opinion regardless of wealth or connections. There is very good evidence that repeating adds (or fake news) at a high frequency will convince people of all kinds of self-defeating ideas.
To be clear, any limitations need to be focused on electioneering and lobbying activities - if some private company wants to rent billboard space to talk about space aliens (assuming there is no current ballot issue about space aliens), no problem.
To return to the point here, and something I previously posted: Petitions. If I have an idea and I can convince a bunch of friends to go out and get signatures, then that proves some level of popular support. If I instead offer employees $1 for every signature they can collect, then the pile of signatures only proves that I can afford to hire people to get that done. People collecting signatures for pay (often) do not care what the issue is, they just want their $$. This is one blatant place where more money equals more access.
No, if the sound truck is immediately behind you, the reach of your speech is reduced (to zero). That is not acceptable.
But if you’re on the corner, speaking, and someone is a couple of blocks away, using a bullhorn he bought, you have no right to use his bullhorn. Or to take it away.
You would have to repeal the first amendment.
And this is somehow an argument to restrict speech rights to whatever the poorest person can do? I guess newspapers don’t have 1st amendment rights then, since it’s not fair that everyone can’t print a newspaper.
Ridiculous and impossible to enforce. What’s the dollar value of commentary on the internet? The dollar value of biased news media? The dollar value of professors, ministers, radio personalities? The dollar value of political art work?
Who’s going to monitor and enforce that?
Freedom of speech, assembly, religion, press, etc. are far more important than dollar equality in a campaign.
Terribly inaccurate analogy with regards to how media is in reality. You have a platform that can reach the whole world practically for free. If you have an interesting enough message.
How would you prevent a politician spending his own money on the campaign? The Constitution would prevent such a restriction. And the result would be the very rich candidates would have a huge advantage.
Maybe while we’re at it, everyone should have to use a public defender in court.
Fine by me; I really doubt if one side winning because they pay for a higher-priced lawyer serves ideal justice.
Which is fine if the state also had to use fresh out of law school rookies. And doesn’t get a team, but just one person having to do all the work building the case.
Not at all. Trump decides what the standards are. Do you still support the idea?
Regards,
Shodan
A billionaire who pays to get himself elected gets one vote in Congress. A billionaire who pays to get other people elected can get dozens of votes in Congress.