For a while now (especially since SCOTUS removed limits on federal campaign spending) I’ve had this idea that, since big money controls so much of the decision making in government, it might be worth considering having a system where your vote is inversely proportional to your wealth: Vote = 1 / Wealth, or something like that. (It doesn’t have to be precisely that, just something along those lines).
Another variation: For a given election, everyone gets, say, N “dollar votes”. You can spend all of them as votes or all of them as campaign contribution dollars, but you can’t go over the limit N. There could be a conversion rate, as well, like 1 vote = 2 dollars (or 2 votes = 1 dollar, or whatever).
For example, say everyone gets 1000 dollar votes with a conversion rate of 1 vote = 5 dollars (and assume the 1000 refers to votes, not dollars). So you could max out by giving 1000 votes to your favorite candidate, or by giving $5000, or by giving 500 votes and $2500 simultaneously.
Has this kind of system (or a variation) been tried anywhere? Do you think it would be viable and equitable (either as proposed or with appropriate variations)? What would the pros and cons be, compared with what we have now in America? (And I’m not seriously suggesting we adopt this; I know there’s not a chance in hell of it being implemented in the US today, anyway. But if there’s no limit on campaign contributions, I think there needs to be some change to give the poor equal representation).
Planting the seed that anything other than “one man, one vote” is permissible will only lead to the disenfranchisement of the less-powerful in the long run.
The idea, I think, is that the non-wealthy are given money which they can use to make political donations to the politician of their choice, thereby levelling the corruption playing field to a small degree by allowing the little guy, as well as the fatcat, the opportunity to bribe politicians.
Apart from the obvious objection that more corruption is not a good thing, there is another objection; why should the non-wealthy have to choose between voting for a candidate and making a donation to him? The wealthy do not have to make that choice. It would be simpler to allocate each voter $5,000 to direct to the candidate of his choice, without in any way affecting his right to vote. Indeed, on the assumption that voters would tend to make donations to the candidates they vote for, you could simply pay each candidate $5,000 for each vote he secures.
The second proposition sounds like proportional voting in some ways.
The first option sounds like the bad old days when only landowners were allowed to vote, but worse. Imagine how bad our countries would be if rich people have votes commensurate to their wealth - the UK, for example, would have whoever Gerald Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Wesminster decided to vote in? He’d have so many votes that anyone else would have a hard time catching up. And most of the next ten richest would vote the same as him.
And I actually thought you were going to propose the opposite: that the 1% should get 1% of the vote (or whatever percentage their income actually fell into), and so forth. I think that would also be terrible but would be more worthwhile as a discussion than giving all the rich people all the votes, or giving people what is basically proportional representation just with more votes.
We have to realize it’s not the vote that matters it’s that once elected even well-meaning politicians succumb to the cesspool of special-interest bribery that is Washington. It’s all about getting re-elected, which is why term limits and fully transparent campaign finance reform are the true remedies.
The Supreme Court has already shot down poll taxes as un-Constitutional - I suspect a poll tax going the other way will fare no better. Plus the notion “the more you pay in taxes the less you will be allowed to influence an election” is going to be a tough sell.
I think that, tying votes to money in any way, will not only likely have little or no effect, but rather than condemning corruption, it condones it by institutionalizing it.
For example, using the first Vote = 1 / Wealth proposal, you’re marginalizing the votes of the wealthy, sure, but in a pool of millions of people, their vote is already marginalized. They aren’t powerful because of their vote, they’re powerful because of the votes they get other people to spend. Potentially, this could even make the rich more powerful since now a particular demographic has greater proportional power, and they can then use that more to their advantage. If they can get greater fractions of millions of votes, I think any of them would happily trade away some of their own.
For the second proposal, the idea of either getting to spend money, vote, or do so in some proportion still seems to favor those in power. For someone who has connections and powerful friends, they could potentially do a lot more with the same amount of money as someone who doesn’t, and that probably correlates pretty strongly with wealth. Now, it might be interesting if we just gave everyone one vote and not only limited the spending, but possibly provided it from the government, letting any registered voter designate the candidates to give it to, but that introduces a whole new set of problems.
Either way, I consider the idea of “one man, one vote” to be sacrosanct. If we want to curb the power of the wealthy or increase the power of the poor, then I’d rather see it done in some method that doesn’t alter that.
Every year, we create and sell a bunch of “shares” in Congress. People will buy them. The biggest 500 shareholders get one vote each.
Since new shares are created every year, influential shareholders have to keep paying. The minute they stop, the “half life” (so to speak) of their power base kicks in.
Well, you don’t need to run faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy. You don’t need to sells idea to the rich, only to the people who don’t make so much-- which is most people.
I would make voting proportional to the taxes you pay. You paid $100,000 in federal taxes last year? You get 100,000 votes. You paid zero taxes last year? You don’t get to vote at all.
Let the people paying the freight have the most say in how the system is managed.
I can’t remember the exact quote, but somebody or other said “a democracy lasts until the common people discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public funds” or words to that effect. Pushing the idea of the OP might speed up the process.
Not that it would ever pass. You would have to amend the Constitution, which no one is motivated enough or rich enough to push thru unless he is rich enough not to want it. And, as gets pointed out with monotonous regularity, this kind of thing increases the power of incumbency. Further entrenchment for the establishment, not any kind of reform.
So a family of four with an annual income of $50,000, per your assessment, is not “paying the freight” and should be disfranchised? Does the fact that they may still be paying sales tax, federal and state gas tax, property tax, state and municipal taxes, and several other forms of tax mean absolutely nothing?
It’s interesting how the same people who hold up taxes as the root of all evil in our government, who never saw a tax cut they didn’t like, now find it appropriate to punish the beneficiaries of their largesse.
Under the proposed system, I’d assume your tax/vote tally would be evaluated in terms of the total tax burden at each level of government.
By that, I mean that someone in Texas wouldn’t get fewer votes in a Federal election than say… someone in Massachusetts, just because Massachusetts has a high state income tax and Texas doesn’t.
Similarly, county and city taxes wouldn’t count for purposes of state elections.
I said “federal taxes.” I never said anything about federal taxes other than income tax not counting. Any tax paid to the federal government would count toward their total votes in federal elections.
As for sales taxes, property taxes, etc. - those count toward voting for state, county, etc. offices. Whatever system you are actually paying for, you get a proportional say in how it’s run.
And furthermore, my system would alleviate, if not totally prevent, the old “vote themselves largesse out of the public funds” problem that **Shodan **correctly points out.
ETA - what **Bump **said.
So the goal now is to punish people for not voting the way they “should”?
And are we going to track who voted for the tax cuts so we know who to disfranchise, or do I lose my right to vote through no fault of my own because some people passed a tax cut that affects me, even though I didn’t support it?
Punish? Should? I never used those words. I’ll thank you not to put them in my mouth.
The point is to have a system with stability. If non-producers can vote themselves “gifts” from the producers, you have an unstable system. It’s like letting the fleas run the dog. Pretty soon, you have chaos, and not long after that, you have nothing at all because the dog is dead.
No, you don’t track who voted for tax cuts so you know who to disenfranchise. You don’t get disenfranchised based on your votes, just based on your tax paying. And remember, even if your tax rate goes down through a change that you didn’t support, you can ALWAYS pay extra (just like now) if you don’t think you are paying enough. But under my system, you actually get rewarded for paying extra - you get extra votes!