If they are politically active in forming policy decisions I see no distinction.
Why would it concern you if donations were public?
But the value of a contribution to a campaign, especially a large one*, assumes the contribution affects the election outcome, ie voters making up their minds based on campaign ads. IOW I don’t think your point really addressed mine about the contradiction between extreme reverence for pure democracy and claiming that money unduly influences elections. Do you vote for people or referendum positions based on ads? If not, who else are you seeking to protect from themselves?
Other than missing my point (with all due respect) I don’t have a problem with what you said as far as it implies disclosing contributions. I have a problem with restricting freedom of speech by limiting contributions. I don’t claim I’m right about that though just because it’s contradictory to bow in reverence to the voter but in the next sentence say he or she can’t be trusted not to just vote for whoever has more ads. But it still is somewhat contradictory I think.
*ie not the difference between working out of the candidates house and having an office and professionally made signs and stuff, thinking more big money ad blitz’s.
For the same reasons that it would concern me if individual’s votes were public information. I wasn’t too keen on the “penumbras of the constitution” at first, but the idea of a right to privacy has definitely grown on me.
Advertising works. I see your point but lets not kid ourselves here. The better funded candidate nearly always wins today and will tomorrow. If one candidate is able to out spend their challenger it will matter to everyone how that was achieved. I reject the notion shame no longer works, we’ve simply made it too easy to hide.
The only solution I see is moving completely to public funding, and not allowing anyone, regardless of the content of their speech, to spend their own money for campaigns. Since it’s content-neutral, I think it could pass a First Amendment challenge.
This would probably reduce the amount of funding, so you’d need shorter election seasons. And that might be the way to sell the idea to the public.
Your privacy analogy is flawed. A more apt one would be a citizen rejecting the notion his 100 political yard signs must all be placed on his property.
I don’t follow you. Could you try to explain it in more detail?
This is strange. The topic was free speech and now for you it’s privacy.
You can be naked all you’d like in your own home, because you have a right to privacy, and now you’re asking me why you can’t be naked in public because you have a right to privacy.
I don’t follow you.
re the privacy highjack… I want to know the names and amounts of big corporate donations…and I want small, personal donations to be safely anonymous.
It’s a lot harder to intimidate a big corporation, but one red handprint on my door, and I’m totally cowed.
Back to boffking, say we somehow wrote a law to do what you want. How exactly, mechanically, would that work?
A functioning economy means that money flows - in and out of cities and states and countries. How would you put brackets around what money could be used and could not be used? The current limits on amounts and sources in politics is obviously somewhat weak (probably by design). But how would you design the limits to be stronger? How is a dollar that somehow flows into Maine as a paycheck or purchase payment or even a birthday gift OK to use in politics in Maine, whereas a dollar that has flowed right up to the border not OK to use?
I want to throw in that outside groups can get involved in an election even if the candidate doesnt want to simply by running ads against another person.
I thought the topic was “transparency”, from posts #28, #34 & #38. I’m not sure I’m convinced that “transparency” in political donations is a good thing, and my skepticism is even stronger when it comes to private organizations that are advocating for an issue rather than politicians running for office. I would worry that people would be subject to retaliation or intimidation for their contributions just like I’d worry that making their actual votes public would lead to the same.
Americans seem to intuitively grasp that a secret ballot is a good and desirable thing. Why are secret contributions supposed to be a bad and undesirable thing?
Because we each have exactly one vote. But Koch has more contribution ability than I do. My multinational employer has more contribution ability than I, or my national union, do.
It’s a balance of power thing.
It is important to me, as a citizen, that my fellow citizens are not politically more equal than I am.
Imagine the right to vote in an election was for sale just like lottery tickets: You pay $1 to a government staffer for each opportunity to vote. You can buy as many as you want and vote as many times as you want. You can even buy bulk packs so there’re no physical impracticalities limiting how many times you can vote. Vote 1 million times if you want. As long as you can stump up $1 apiece.
What do you think of that country? What does that do to democracy? Does this give you a warm fuzzy feeling that you’d like to live in that country?
Now recognize that what we have today is somewhere between 50 and 90% of the way to implementing my thought experiment. Just using indirect legal means plus a bunch of under-the-table means.
IMO *that *is a problem. One worth exercising our brains and our political power as ordinary citizens to return our democracy to something much closer to a system where people vote; dollars don’t.
I’m a 2%er or so. My political power is nil compared to the 1%ers, much less that of the 0.1%ers. That’s wrong. That’s evil. That must be stopped.
Forgot to mention: Corporations and foundations and PACs and such can buy the right to vote just like citizens can. Just send a rep with a check and collect your ballots. $1 a pop.
We’re almost there now. Do we want to try to turn things around?
I’m going to need a cite on that one, evidence that they can register and submit ballots.
This sounds like an claim from someone whom doesn’t understand that when people exercise one right, they don’t lose the rights to other rights.
If you exercise your right to association by forming a knitting circle, you do not lose the ability to publish pro-knitting newsletters. It does not mean that the knitting circle gets a ballot and can vote.
Note that through joining together in a group the barriers that prevent an individuals voice from being heard can be overcome. This is how “corporations” like the ACLU, SPLC, EFF etc… function.
The “fictional” personality is a group of persons working together to reach a common goal. If only individuals could publish the Koch’s would still have the money to do so but people whom need groups like the ACLU would be voiceless.
This is the risk of randomly banning things because people whom you don’t like can’t use it. You have to protect rights for everyone, not destroy them to quash unpopular speech.
I meant corps or orgs could vote in my hypothetical $1/vote country. Clearly they cannot do so today in the real world. Just as David Koch himself, the individual, can’t vote any more times than I can: once.
My hypothetical is just a mechanism to get people to think. Think whether that world would be good. Think about what would be wrong with it. And then to think about how much our current world amounts to almost the same end result with therefore almost the same shortcomings.
I’m not debating if political advertising ever works*. I simply pointing out the potential contradiction by people who pine for more democracy on one hand, yet in the next breath say other voters can’t be trusted not to just vote for who ever has more ads. And again, I assume you don’t think you’re putty in the hands of political advertisers, but are trying to protect others from themselves, no?
*though it obviously doesn’t always. Trump for example won the GOP nomination very heavily outspent.
Those of us who are very certain in our opinions are more resistant to advertising than the people who are “undecided.” I am immune to the ads, but my neighbor, who repeats every Urban Legend in circulation, is very much putty in their hands.
You each get one vote in the system we have. Each person isn’t entitled to an equal audience for his or her message though.
Anonymous speech has long been a very important part of the political process, particularly when speaking truth to power. The Federalist Papers (just one particularly-relevant example) were published under a pseudonym. Removing that protection because you think that some rich people can more effectively spread messages you disagree with could have far-reaching and very negative ramifications.
If I can anonymously print up some fliers and leave them in the public square, why can’t I and a group of like-minded people pool our money to anonymously run some television ads or produce Youtube videos or print up some direct mail ads?