How to make the elections fairer

Great Debates
1

Sort of. This is more of a primary thing. It irks me when good candidates (of any party) are held back in the primary due to lack of funding. How about this:

No candidate can raise funds until they are the OFFICIAL candidate of their party. Until then, all funds must go through the party, who will divide them EQUALLY among ALL the candidates. No more cases like McCain (who I tink could have had a better chance in the primaries if GW didn’t haveso much cash in his pocket) or Bill Bradley (ditto - funding)

Feel free to shoot me down in flames/lift me up on cloud nine, as is your wont.

2

Not a bad idea. It still chaps me to no end that Bradley and McCain both had to drop out of their respective campaigns before most of the country had had a chance to vote in the primary. Securing a presidential nomination is hardly something for which the candidates should be running unopposed after the first week of March; it stunts the democratic process.

Not to mention that, based on poll numbers at the time, McCain would have handily beaten Bush, Gore, or Bradley in a general election.

Of course, there’s always a little thing called Buckley v. Valeo which prohibits campaign spending limits. So I don’t believe your idea is strictly constitutional, as the constitution is now interpreted.

3

One problem is that people could choose to “run” in the primaries, collect their allotment of money from the party, and then keep the money instead of spending it.

4

But what if you like Bradley but think Gore is a scumbag? How would you feel about half the money you gave going to Gore? Having to raise money is a good barometer of public support, after all if people had been so gung ho over Bradley and McCain there was nothing stopping them from giving them money.

5

You misspelled, “Having to raise money is a good barometer of support from people who have money.” Hope that helps. :slight_smile:

6

Everybody has some money, so my statement stands.

7

:rolleyes:

So a wealthy person giving $1,000 dollars indicates the same level of public support as 1,000 poorer persons giving $1 each? One dollar, one vote, then is what you’re saying?

8

  1. Campaign finance reform. We need some way of evening the playing fields here.

  2. Less ballot restrictions. Third parties have to jump through hoops in a lot of jurisdictions to just get on the ballot.

  3. Less “games.” In some states, you cannot vote in primaries depending upon what party you are registered under. This can lead to collusion in some places, and at best definitely lacks consistancy.

  4. Easier to register with less lag time between when you can register and when you vote. A lot of states have done this. We need everyone to do so.

  5. There HAS to be a fairer way of weeding out the candidates of the two main parties than to have a few New England states get the first crack at it, which is kind of what we’ve got here. By the time the choice makes it to a majority of Americans, their choices have already been eliminated thanks to a “tradition” which I find unfair.

I’m sure there’s more stuff…

Yer pal,
Satan

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9

Not to mention that while everyone may have some money, most people don’t have enough money to donate some of it to political campaigns.

Your response was a bit glib, glum; I’m disappointed. Surely you know that the majority of registered voters don’t make campaign contributions for the presidential race–not to speak of the millions and millions of eligible non-registrees out there.

The ability to raise funds, especially when amassing a war chest before the campaign even begins, is indicative of nothing more than that many people with the capacity to make large contributions support your candidacy. Hardly the way to choose a presidential nominee.

10

lawoot suggested:

1.) Does every candidate get equal funding? So Joe Smith, retired stevedore from Shreveport, LA (83 years old, no political experience, feels that blacks are getting “too uppity” and that the youth of America “should pay higher taxes so we can damn well enjoy our retirement”) gets the same amount of money as Al Gore and Bill Bradley? Or do we weight funding based upon “viability”? And if so, how do we weight it?
2.) What’s to keep Al Gore from getting thirty of his friends to run for President, get all that money, and then run nothing but “Al Gore for President, paid for by the joe Smith for President Campaign” ads?
3.) Once someone’s candidacy has proved non-viable, do we stop giving them money? If not, doesn’t that lead to situation number 2? If so, doesn’t that enshrine the problem of the winners of small early primaries having a huge advantage over other candidates?
4.) Finally, and possibly most importantly- why would anyone bother contributing money for the primaries any more? If there are eight candidates for the Republican nomination, then 7/8ths of the money I give in go to the candidates I don’t prefer. Why should I even bother?

11

John,

With regard to your first three points, I see no reason why there shouldn’t be a viability threshold similar to that established for entry into the debates. If a candidate is polling fifteen percent among registered voters of his or her party, then that candidate becomes eligible for shared funds. Simple enough–inclusive without being wide open.

Honestly, I’d view this as a considerable side benefit. The greater the extent to which money can be separated from its symbiosis with politics, the better.

12

Question- when does the polling take place? You need to have time before the first primaries for candidates to get their campaign in gear; but some candidates won’t even register on those polls until they get their campaigns in gear. Had we polled voters in August of '75, Jimmy Carter never would have seen funds; likewise, in August of '91, Bill Clinton was barely a blip on the radar.

But doesn’t that lead to stasis situations? That is, it’s a lot easier for people to know what Al Gore stands for- hey, he’s been Vice-President for eight years- than it is for people to know what Bill Bradley stands for (wasn’t he a Senator? No, I think he was a basketball player).

By evening out money, you hand the advantage in primaries to those who have been in the news longer. Bizzarro candidates like Donald Trump and Cybil Shepard do just fine because people know their names; other candidates with a good program but no national recognition (say, John McCain, or continuing the earlier example, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter) fall by the wayside.

I think you’re ‘solving’ a ‘problem’ by replacing it with a completely different problem; rather than being based upon how much money a candidate can raise with traditional party backers, you’re seeing how much air-time and public notice they can get before the race even begins.

13

Switch to Aussie-style voting (rank all candidates rather than vote for just one). This would be a huge hassle, as voting methods are set by the individual states, but I think that this would be the single most effective thing we could do.

Once people understand how it works, and that they can vote their first rank to the candidate that actually want, using their second as the ‘lesser of evils’ vote, we’d see a huge swing in voting patterns and a leap in smaller parties.

It would also allow us to…stop restricting ballot access. What good purpose is served by limiting whom you can choose (other than to maintain the status quo, of course)? To reduce costs, eliminate runoffs, etc. There are states that allow damn near anyone on the ballot; they seem to manage to pick someone everytime. Yeah, sometimes they have 20 candidates listed, but what does that hurt? You’re going to have an election anyway. Since there are never run-offs with this system, there would be no need to restrict candidates to keep costs down.

It could possibly allow us to eliminate the primary system altogether, or at least reduce the primaries back to the purpose of selecting candidates for the two major parties (rather than selecting the ONLY candidates).

Campaign finance reforms are definitely needed, but I’ve never seen a good, workable plan for doing such. I’m not sure such a creature exists; most seem to be about trading one set of problems for another.

I’d have to agree with Satan about the states ‘playing games’ with their election systems. I live in a state where you MUST register a party affiliation, and once that is done you MUST vote that affiliation in the primaries.

Then too, since our electoral votes are sold as a block, usually nearly half of the voters are totally unrepresented in the Electoral College. Major revisions needed there, as well.

Hassle-free voting? Yeah, that would probably help. I’ve been thinking about this since I heard of Oregon’s attempt this year at mail-only voting. I think it could be done fairly easily, and be fairly fraud-proof as well. (I love computers. :D)

That’s all I can think of offhand…

14

Satan suggests:

and redtail23 agrees:

Yep, “open” primaries. It would brighten my declining years to see the DNC’s members’ faces when they discover that Jesse Helms got 20% of the convention delegates.

15

John: Those are points to be considered. I don’t have time to respond in depth right now, but I’d suggest that candidate viability is becoming dependent on fundraising to a greater and greater degree–1992, in which there was a varied field of candidates for the Democratic nomination into late spring, is an anomaly in that respect. More to the point are the 1996 and 2000 elections, where the party nominations were secured in advance of most state primaries; I’d suggest this is the trend we’ll see into the future, as most candidates drop out early on for lack of fundraising muscle against the establishment nominee.

Your questions about the timing of polls are good ones; I raise the same ones when asking about the restrictive nature of the presidential debates. I think taking it back to August of the previous year is a bit too much; I’d suggest polling in January and February. This would give candidates a chance to establish themselves and their stances on the issues, so that voter might make some semblance of an informed choice. (Of course, this in itself is dependent on a shift in the way campaigns are conceived and covered–horse race politics pays little attention to issues–but since the idea of the OP runs counter to Buckley anyway, I figure I can wax a bit utopian.)

Finally, and I think this was covered by Spiritus on the McCain-Feingold thread, I honestly don’t believe that the detachment of moneyed interests from politics will serve to further entrench the established candidates. It may be true that levelling the finance field results in more support for those candidates who garner more positive exposure and name recognition; the alternative, however, is default support for those who can raise more money, since they’re the only ones mounting a “serious candidacy” in the eyes of the media. And since candidates are likely to preempt their own campaigns, as McCain and Bradley did this year, in order to beat a tactical retreat until the next election, a situation is engendered in which primary voters are presented with no choice at all–as opposed to a choice between multiple candidates with whom most of them must be somewhat familiar.

(I’d point out, too, that the “traditional party backers” you see as donating money to the campaigns are more and more contributing to both parties. Many businesses give many thousands of dollars to the Democrats and the Republicans in an election cycle. Hardly the pinnacle of the democratic process.)

Also, I’d wager that no matter the name recognition, neither Donald Trump nor Cybill Shepherd would garner more than token support without a substantive platform. In fact, even with a level playing field, it might be more difficult for “novelty” candidates than for candidates perceived by the press to be legitimate, because the novelty candidates face the added burden of having to convince people that they’re not a novelty.

Hmm, I guess I did go a bit in-depth.

16

While everyone can not give the same amount of money there are more people who could give smaller donations. If 2 million people gave a candidate $50, which for most people is no great sacrifice, the candidate would be the most succesful fundraiser ever.
Having people put their money on a candidate is a great way to see how popular a candidate is. If people lack the interest to support a candidate with their money the probably dont support him that much.

17

More information than debate, but I hope it helps:

I live in Washington, where we had our last open primary this year. They said that we were the last state to have them. We were given ballots with all the presidential candidates on it, and anyone could choose anyone. No need to declare a party affiliation.

It was the last one, because the state was sued by the Democratic party and lost. Open primaries are apparently considered bad for the big parties.

18

Under campaign finance laws novelty candidates would have a huge advantage because most of what traditional candidates spend their money on is to build their name recognition.
Minnesota is one of the states with the strictest campaign finance laws and a novelty candidate won their governorship.

19

Satan said

Amen.

20

They are, and rightly so, in my opinion. I know I’m going against the prevailing sentiment in the posts to this thread, but I’m against open primaries.

As the system is currently structured, the purpose of the primary election is to select each party’s candidate for the November Big Show. Why on earth would the Democratic Party (for example) be enthused about allowing Republicans to have a say in this? Why should Republicans have a say in this?

Personally, I think state-run primaries aren’t the best thing, to begin with, although I can understand how they came about. Each party has to select a One True Candidate to go on the November ballot under its flag. How they do that should be their problem, not the state’s, IMO. I think the parties should be responsible for running their own primaries, but I know that ain’t going to happen. As it is, the states take care of it for all of them, on the same day and in the same voting booth.

BUT, that doesn’t change the real nature of what’s going on: members of each party are choosing which of their various candidates should be run in the big election. It makes no sense to me to allow members of another party, or people not affiliated with any party, to have a say in this.

California went back to “closed” primaries this year, which I was pleased to see. The way they implemented it was disastrous, but that’s an slightly different rant.

My opinion, which I know is not shared by all: open primaries are contrary to the spirit of what they’re supposed to be, and are bad idea.