Campaign finance reform isn't reform

And yet the lack of reform is merely leaving power in the hands of millionaires who can buy someone's way into an office.

I'd rather go the other way and try to come up with some way to make all campaigning free. Just like the incumbents in Congress can use the Congressional Post Office to send out all their mailings for free, any political flyer should cost the campaigner 0 cents to mail.

Of course, that opens up whole new cans of economical worms....

Now, whether it's good for "democracy" or not, it is reform

Cheers

Why should Barbara Streisand have more influence over who becomes President than say Bill Gates?

Cut out private funding altogether. Give the candidates the same amount of money and let them compete on a level playing field on equal terms.

I'd rather go the other way and try to come up with some way to make all campaigning free. Just like the incumbents in Congress can use the Congressional Post Office to send out all their mailings for free, any political flyer should cost the campaigner 0 cents to mail.

Actually, the Franking privelige can not be used to send out campaign flyers, any officer of the federal government found guilty of that can face serious jail time.

Cheers

Cut out private funding altogether. Give the candidates the same amount of money and let them compete on a level playing field on equal terms.

Then there will be a LOT of 'freebies' from supporters. Not much difference. I'm against foreign and corporate donations but otherwise it's fine.

Surely any campaign reform will include 'benefit in kind' spending. It would be a serious loophole if it didn't. This would mean that any benefits received for free would still be counted against the overall expenditure.

I assume that media outlets would also have to take a balanced political approach. To be honest the whole issue of media and politics needs to be addressed very carefully. While a free media is good, a one sided propaganda media in an election would be very bad for democracy. Many countries force the primary media stations to give equal air time to all major political parties.

Finally, some countries limit total campaign spending, but don't limit total contributions. In such cases once the election process starts the spending (including benefit in kind) must be carefully controlled and kept within budget, but the donations are unrestricted. What parties do with excess cash after an election is up to them.

Campaign finance reform is not about limiting people's ability to participate in democracy, it's about giving everyone an equal voice. You know that one man one vote sort of thing.

Paul.

Why should Barbara Streisand have more influence over who becomes President than say Bill Gates?

Why should either of them have more influence than I do? One citizen, one vote.

Cut out private funding altogether. Give the candidates the same amount of money and let them compete on a level playing field on equal terms.

If you do that then you hand power over to the media. The media, which is outside these rules, can basically decide the President. And celebrities are therefore capable of having a disproportional impact because their opinions get covered in the media no matter how idiotic they are.

Why can't, for instance, me and my friends get together and pay for a newspaper advertisement or TV commercial explaining why we are for Candidate X? Why should WE get censored but Howard Stern or NY Times editorialists can espouse their opinions without limit?

Campaign finance reform is basically the media empowerment movement.

Campaign finance reform is not about limiting people's ability to participate in democracy, it's about giving everyone an equal voice. You know that one man one vote sort of thing.

An equal voice eh? So you would favor eliminating the press while you're at it then? After all, why should Peter Jennings have a "greater" voice than any other citizen?  People who favor such censorship are almost always selective.  They want to remove MY voice with the effect of magnifying the voice of those who go unaffected -- i.e. the media. 

Unfettered campaign financing by individuals is the only way people like me can have a voice even remotely equal to a celebrity, journalist, or editorial writer.  The people of our country who have jobs such as making food, building shelter, curing the sick, taking care of the infirm, they don't have the same voice as say Paul Krugman of the New York Times who gets to spew propaganda on a daily basis. So what is your plan to make Joe Voter have the same voice as Paul Krugman? Or Rosie O'donald? Or Barbara Streisand? Or Bill O'Reilly?

Why should Bill Gates have more of a voice than me just because he has the money I don't have?

Tough issue, we don'e wan't the people with millions of dollars controlling everything but we also don't want the media controlling everything either. The fact is Joe voter is never going to be on an equal playing field. I would prefer to limit campaign donations to people/companies inside their district. Of course this is easier said than done but I don't really wan't a senator from Colorado getting funding from big money people of any type in Vermont. If your a congressman then your limited to your district.

I agree with you conceptually, but disagree semantically. We are a Republic and NOT a domocracy!

[blockquote]…[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention…intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often…oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country. Fisher Ames, American statesman, 1805[/blockquote]

I agree with you conceptually, but disagree semantically. We are a Republic and NOT a domocracy!

I]…[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention…intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often…oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country. Fisher Ames, American statesman, 1805[/I

None of the "reform" concepts have proposed any solutions that would curb the power of the media.

Why should Bill Gates have more of a voice than me just because he has the money I don't have?

The difference is that the government shouldn't forcibly keep some people from speaking and not others.

I prefer a system where the government isn't limiting anyone.

I dont think anyone has suggested we stop some people from speaking and not others, merely they cant donate huge amounts of money. They can still talk and put forward how things will affect business and so jobs and the like just not contribute large amounts. I think you are trying to alter what people have said Brad.

"The difference is that the government shouldn't forcibly keep some people from speaking and not others."
Agreed, but your proposal gives the loudest voice to those who have the most money, and large corporations with vested interest in (for example) energy policy could really shape an election purely in their favour.

Brad said: "Why can't, for instance, me and my friends get together and pay for a newspaper advertisement or TV commercial explaining why we are for Candidate X? Why should WE get censored but Howard Stern or NY Times editorialists can espouse their opinions without limit?"

I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm mistaken, but from what I've seen, there is nothing preventing you from doing just that. Certainly you can take out the newspaper ad with no trouble; most of the reform is aimed at TV spending.
If you don't want your commercial aired within 60 days of the election, it's no problem. If you spend less than $10,000 a year on political advertising, no problem. (That seems pretty unlikely if you want the ad to be seen repeatedly in high-exposure timeslots, I'll admit.)
And even if it is about Candidate X, within 60 days of an election, then (from what I can see in my (admittedly hasty) research) it just means that the ad can't be paid for with "soft money" (i.e. money you gave to a PAC or to the Republican General Fund or whatever) and information will be collected about who is responsible for the ad. So if you want to pony up the $2,000,000 to run it every night for a month during Friends, you can.

Brad,
you will notice that I carefully used the term 'benefit in kind' in my reply. To answer your specific and very valid issues,

- In my mind if you personally take out an ad in a newspaper then the value of this ad should be deducted from the spending power of the candidate.

- I believe that any TV network above a certain size should be required by law to provide equal airtime and unbiased factual reporting of elections. I have no problem with someone being critical or a candidate so long as that critism is based on facts and the candidate is given a chance to respond. Over the past fwe months I've often heard people on JU moan about the biased nature of US media. Maybe it's time to do something about it. Maybe there should be some basic rules about truth and facts. Maybe programmes should be clearly labelled as biased so that voters know the political affiliation of those on TV who would talk politics to them.

Reform of campaign finance needs to take all these issues into account. You can't reform finance without limiting or reforming benefit in kind donations.

Paul.

- In my mind if you personally take out an ad in a newspaper then the value of this ad should be deducted from the spending power of the candidate.


Solitair: that would open the possibility to "spend" the budget of your opponents with mediocre ads, if you've got friends willing to do so.

In theory, campaign contributions are supposed to be given with no expectation of anything being done in return. If this were true, there would be no need for campaign finance reform.

However, the tendency is that big contributors exert more influence over candidates. Unlimited contributions tend to marginialize the participation of anyone who doesn't have a large pile of money.

There needs to be restrictions of how money is used to (directly) influence government officials. Bribery is bad.

The problem is, limiting the ability of people to spread their ideas is undemocratic also. What there needs to be is an appropriate level of seperation between money and politicians.

I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm mistaken, but from what I've seen, there is nothing preventing you from doing just that. Certainly you can take out the newspaper ad with no trouble; most of the reform is aimed at TV spending. If you don't want your commercial aired within 60 days of the election, it's no problem. If you spend less than $10,000 a year on political advertising, no problem. (That seems pretty unlikely if you want the ad to be seen repeatedly in high-exposure timeslots, I'll admit.) And even if it is about Candidate X, within 60 days of an election, then (from what I can see in my (admittedly hasty) research) it just means that the ad can't be paid for with "soft money" (i.e. money you gave to a PAC or to the Republican General Fund or whatever) and information will be collected about who is responsible for the ad. So if you want to pony up the $2,000,000 to run it every night for a month during Friends, you can.

The candidate and the big business would be able to agree that if the candidate supports the big business, that the big business will take out ads in favor of the candidate, so it still seems as though the rich win in this case since they'll be having the richest supporters advertising for them.

Good point awake98,

it has already been dealt with in other countries though. Political adverts on national press or TV require the approval of the political party they favour before they can be shown/aired/printed. Interestingly many countries also ban negative campaigning as it's seen as bad for the political process, dis-illusioning voters and reducing voter turnout.

Paul.

Campaign finance is one aspect of our election system that is screwed up, but there are others. First, I have proposed a federal system of anonymous contributions which parallels the privacy of the ballot. There has been some academic interest in this idea. You can get the details at www.gocities.com/dfrank_robinson. The 10th Circuit Court Appeals rule just last week that the State of Oklahoma cannot compel political parties to exclude voters of other parties from the party's primary elections - it is now optional - a party can choose to have a closed primary or it can open it up. Obviously, this gives voters more choice if a party chooses to invite them in. The Libertarian Party of Oklahoma prevailed in the suit. The AG of Oklahoma says he will appeal to the Supreme Court.

This brings me to another issue which is similar to the Oklahoma case. Why must voters be assigned to a geographical district for representation? The politicans, in effect, choose their voters. Ninety-eight percent of incumbents in the U.S. House get re-elected. This election pundits say there are only 15 competitive elections for the U.S. House. Why not let voters "transfer" out of the district they are asigned to . How? Put secure ballot printers in every polling place. It would print the correct ballot for any voter in the state on-demand. Any voter could vote anywhere in the state with the right ballot for his "location". It's just like absentee ballots, but they are cast on election day and counted with all the other absentee ballots cast by voters in advance. So, if you don't like your incumbent congressman and the opposition won't put up an acceptable candidate (often because they know they can't win in that area), then you just "move" you registration for congress to a district that has candidates you like better. By the way, these districts are nearly always half empty of registered voters, so one person/one vote is not violated any more than it is by a low voter turnout. Yeah, it seems too simply to accomplish anything, but consider that the voters can "emigrate" to a district and make it competitive! The incumbent in the "safe" district is shown to be a loser even if he wins because people are "voting with their feet" to support someone else. Ok. There are more implications but consider what this might do to shake things loose.

sorry URL is www.geocities.com/dfrank_robinson/

Do you suppose someone could run for Congress on these ideas?