(Note to mods…not necessarily a debate, but any political discussion may get contentious.)
I heard a commentator on NPR this morning (possibly a local segment, so I may not be able to provide a link) propose the following:
All political campaign contributions should be sent to a blind trust. The trustees would then forward those monies to the respective campaign, anonymously and in bulk.
This breaks the link between the donation and the donor…therefore, the politician would feel no compulsion to provide favors for such donations. The donor may want to call up the politician and say “I just sent you $100k; let’s meet in your office” but the politician would be perfectly justified in not necessarily accepting this claim at face value.
This sidesteps neatly all objections that “donations are free speech”. Feel free to donate to the campaign of your choice…just don’t expect a quid pro quo, because your choice may not be able to recognize you. Lobbyists could continue to enjoy access to the politician…but without a briefcase full of cash, they may find it harder to get an appointment. And this doesn’t require government funding of campaigns, and all the mess that entails.
The commentator didn’t raise this further, but I will – any direct contribution could then be taken as an attempted bribe.
This seems to me to be blindingly, scathingly brilliant. What are the possible objections?
I’ve wondered about that for a long time myself - I’m not sure why it hasn’t been done, but I assume it’s because of every lobbyist shouting “FUCK NO!” at the same time.
Then again, who would trust the trustees? It’s all gotten so corrupt I don’t see anything ever changing it. Too bad.
"Hi, Senator Slimeball, this is Joe Smith at Amalgamated Lobbyists calling. How ya doing? It’s a nice day here, I just wanted to chat and say hi. Oh, you want to hear something funny? We’ve recently gotten a windfall of $300,000, and it’s just lying around here – the guys at the office are having a poll on how we want to spend it. Maybe we’ll buy a yacht, or go on a vacation, or buy a year’s supply of sodas for our interns. Haven’t decided yet, that money could end up just about anywhere… Isn’t that funny?
“Anyway, hope you have a nice day, and I hope that blind trust for your re-election campaign keeps growing. See ya!”
At least in the current system, I can look at who donated what and know that Senator Smith is a shill of the poultry industry because they gave him $500,000. Under your system, I won’t even know that.
Under the proposed system, Sen. Smith could listen to the poultry lobbyist, nod politely, and vote however he wants. He has no particular reason to believe that the lobby did indeed donate the $500k, so he’s free to actually vote his conscience.
Now, if Sen. Smith *wants * to sell his vote, to anybody who even *claims * they funded his campaign… there’s not much we can do about that.
Even if donating is made anonymous, you can bet Senator Smith is going to know Amalgamated Poultry gave him campaign money. If for no other reason, the Amalgamated Poultry people are going to tell him they gave him $500,000, and he can look at his “anonymous” totals and see that he’s got donations of $500,000 more than usual.
The goal should be greater disclosure of campaign contributions, not less.
A method of regulation that depends on secrecy has a single-source failure. Once the secret is revealed the regulation fails, and the failure can’t be corrected.
A method of regulation that depends on disclosure can fail, but the failure can be easily corrected once the lack of disclosure is discovered.
But this isn’t a system of regulation, per se. It is not interested in limiting contributions. It is an attempt to eliminate the grey area between campaign donations and bribes, by removing any motivation (other than an altruistic one) to donate to a campaign.
How to game the proposed system? Ummm, I suspect that ways could be found.
It’s in the lobbyist’s interests to make sure just that Senator Graft knows just where the largesse came from, and that the goodies can keep coming for as long as the good Senator shows appreciation for the lobbyist’s clients’ point of view. And anyhow, how is Senator Graft going to get re-elected if he runs out of funds for all the mailers that are needed?
At the least, we’d have a continuation of the current ‘soft-money’ situation, where the money goes to organizations sympathetic to the candidate, but not (provably) controled by the candidate.
The other angle I can think of quickly is that the contribution would not be money as such, but some other valuable that could most likely only have come from the donor. Such as… help me out here…
Funny you should raise this question now that Mr. Moto has announced he’s leaving. In this thread I raised a similar question, only to have him (and Ravenman, and a few others) fail to get some of the points I was trying to raise, which resemble some of yours. Good Luck!
Would you also make it illegal for me to advocate that people vote for a particular candidate?
Would you make it illegal for me to put a sign in my yard? Would you make it illegal for me to print up a bunch of signs and distribute them to others? How about if I stood on streetcorners holding up the sign? How about if I put up a billboard? How about if I purchased billboard space? How about if I printed up pamphlets explaining why I supported the candidate? How about if I stuffed those pamphlets into evelopes and mailed them to registered voters in my district? How about if I purchased space in a newspaper explaining why I supported the candidate? How about if I went on the radio show I host and endorsed the candidate? How about if I purchased advertising time on a radio show and endorsed the candidate? What if I endorsed the candidate on my blog? What if I put up a web page endorsing the candidate? What if I endorsed a candidate here on the SDMB?
Lemur, I think there’s a huge difference between advocating for a candidate, and giving money to a candidate. There’s no way that putting a sign in your yard can be considered a bribe; the same cannot be said of a direct campaign contribution.
I would also like to see government funding of campaigns, but I always get stuck on where one draws the line. Do you give as much funding/air time to the Vegetarian Party candidate as the Democrat/Republican?
Of course there is a difference. How about if you and me and Brainglutton and 200 of our closest friends got together to coordinate our advocacy? We could call our group a re-election committee. We’d all contribute our time. And for things that require money, like taking out ads, we’d contribute money. And we could solicit other people who believed in the candidate to contribute money as well, so we could get our message out more effectively. Those newspaper ads don’t come cheap, unless you already own a newspaper.
I can’t see a way to ban political advertisments without repealing the first amendment. I’m free to advocate for the election of a candidate. I’m free to do so in person, I’m free to distribute fliers, I’m free to do so in my newspaper, on my radio show, in newspaper ads, and in radio ads. And I’m free to coordinate my efforts with all the other people who endorse a candidate.
There’s no way putting a sign in my yard could be considered a bribe. What if I pay to have signs put up in someone elses yard? Is that a bribe? What if I form a committee to put up signs, and get everyone to contribute money, and put up signs where I think it will do the most good? Is that a bribe? What if I just write a check to that committee, because I support the candidate? Is that a bribe?
There’s no principled distinction I can see between putting up a sign and paying to put up a sign.
You’ve convinced me, Lemur. As long as campaigns are long and expensive, those who pay the costs will have influence and leverage over the candidate – whether those funds are given to the candidate directly, indirectly, or by independent groups on his behalf.
So the system is hopelessly corrupt. The only solution is to make campaigns short and/or inexpensive, through government funding. Running for president? Great…here’s $1M. Buy yourself a few commercials; knock yourself out. We may actually see meaningful debates (which are free) rather than attack ads.
In addition to the practical obstacles nicely set forth by Lemur, there is the fact that giving a monetary donation is itself a political message - I’m not just expressing an opinion about candidate/issue/etc., I believe in it so strongly that I am going to give away my hard-earned money to help make it happen. “Put your money where your mouth is.”
All this does is add some noise to the communications channel or (depending on implementation) force a third party as intermediary.
If the contribution “bundling” happens often enough then all a donor has to do is coordinate with the politician to give within a certain period and give enough that the donation is distinguishable from the noise of an average donation period.
If the bundling happens seldom enough that the above stratagy is not sufficient to ensure shared information about donating, then third-party groups will simply arise that will accept (and be accountable for) donations from interested donors and will themselves be able to make large enough donations at intervals.
Just off the top of my head, here are some other ways to circumvent the system:
[ul][li]For sufficiently large donations (which are really the ones we’re concerned with), have a political staffer accompany the donor from his financial institution to the contribution trustee.[/li][li]Create a publicly held corporation to hold the assets to be donated. Dissolve the corporation and transfer all assets to the politician. I believe that financial disclosure laws would provide a legally valid record of asset transfer.[/li][li]Donations in-kind. All you have to do is donate something that is either unique to your organization or is not fungible the way cash is, and the trustee will be unable to mask this donation with others[/ul][/li]
Theoretically, controlling the communications channel of money transfers might be enough to make knowledge of amounts unreliable, but I have no doubt that fully determined parties on both sides will quickly find ways of routing any system that would (given the huge amounts of money and power at stake) necessarily have its procedures codified into law.
At best, you introduce a little bit of inefficiency into the system. At worst, you enable huge levels of fraud within the trustee organization itself.
