Wouldn't this be solved rather easily by prohibiting fund raising and using tax dollars to finance campaigns? Everyone gets the same budget? That means money has no sway over politicians and money can't influence the result unfairly.
better solution: comprehensive campaign financing reform (e.g. all donations must be done by an individual, strict limits on the amount of financing, limits on the amount of advertising and type that candidates are allowed to do, public disclosure of donors, amounts, and campaign spending etc...)
Campaign finance reform is a bad idea. Not only would it also limit legitimate free speech it also wouldn't solve the problem. The real problem is excessive power in the hands of the government. Today congress has its fingers in every industry, to a degree that can easily result in causing the success or failure of one or another company based on their more or less arbitrary decisions. This creates a natural need to try to control or influence that power. If we take away the ability to contribute to campaigns then corporations and moneyed interests will simply turn to more direct forms of corruption.
In short corruption is a symptom, trying to stop the least objectionable types of it will merely drive it underground and more direct. The problem we need to solve is the ability of corruption to be successful.
The best and only constitutional solution is to publicly fund all federal elections. 2 billion a year could fully fund all congressional elections. You don't even need to fund the presidential election because the two parties raise more than enough money themselves. They are already buying literally all the commercial time on TV in swing states. More money doesn't provide much marginal benefit at that stage.
That wouldn't prevent companies from funding PACs, but it would greatly reduce their influence.
I'm not overly familiar with Lessig, but I believe he proposed the public funding option on a RealTime with Bill Mayer.
I'd also increase individual donation limits. Upper Middle Class people throwing 20k to a campaign for shits and giggles doesn't carry the same sort of risk as Boeing giving 500k and then asking for a defense contract.
I don't think anyone struggles to imagine how a better system would work. The issue is that the current Supreme Court has set strict limits on the legal regulation of campaign finance, so there are few straightforward paths to reform.
This is a feature of democracy. The solution is not campaign finance reform, it is reform of democracy itself. Place additional separation between the people/corporations and the purse-strings of the treasury, and you will reduce this problem. Alternatively, you can take power & responsibility away from the government so that market forces come to bear upon the issue.
Democracy is, after all, a system in which a determined voting majority can use the hammer of the state to extract wealth from the rest of the population. Many people vote in self-defense.
I know that arguing for smaller government and less democracy is an unpopular position, but it is the only way to achieve long-term success. The areas of the economy with the most government involvement and regulation are where we find costs ballooning out of control: healthcare, prisons, infrastructure, student loans, military. Continuing on the present course is not sustainable.
Fix campaign financing laws to limit the power of money in politics. The only reason the politicians listen to the impassioned few over the apathetic many is because the impassioned few are willing to supply the money needed to get reelected. Fix that, and politicians will start representing the interests of the broadest swathe of the electorate or, gasp, voting with their conscience based on what seems like the right thing to do.
Sadly, we seem to be going the opposite direction on this at the moment.
> In competitive districts, politicians are far more dependent on campaign funding.
If we're dreaming big here, how about we try fixing campaign funding too? To give a concrete suggestion, the US should pass a constitutional amendment which allows Congress to limit expenditure on political advertising (but not other forms of political speech). Here is one such approach:
I agree with both ideas. Unfortunately for the thing to be fixed those passing laws should benefit from it being fixed -- but on the contrary they benefit for it being broken.
So, the first thing that should probably be fixed is: no campaign donations, at all.
Campain donations just let the politicians catering to the richer population get more advertising and marketing power.
I'd go as far as forbid all political / campaign advertising. If they want to convince, let them organically convince their local voters, then their state, and up to the whole party etc. Not with costly marketing, videos and large, costly, speaking appearances.
Right now they have no chance of being elected unless they spend obscene sums. Remove that need through campaign finance regulations and you will remove an enormous source of leverage. I would be happy to see a 50% mix of public money and 50% individual capped donations making up a cursory figure. Legally require large networks to give free and equal airtime to each candidate with enough support to justify inclusion. It simply cannot be impossible to remove the biggest sources un-democratic influence.
What do you think about campaign finance reform? Have you ever thought of any reasonable way to tackle that, given that the most powerful senators/representatives who could put this together typically have the best fundraising engines and probably want to maintain that advantage against upstarts?
It seems like fixing this is a prerequisite to fixing many other broken aspects of the govt.
Although the logistics are hairy to work out, I think that the most important reform that could be made would be banning private contributions to campaigns entirely, and making every candidate equally funded through tax funds.
Every candidate should have an equal voice, and should not have to sell their souls or pander to large donors in order to be competitive in their campaign.
This is all fine and I don't disagree with you, but how do you propose we fix the real problem (federal control over far too much) without first removing the endemic corruption favoring entrenched interests that our current campaign finance laws not only permit but encourage? Do you expect our current political class to vote for less power for themselves? Or for the corporate entities funding congressment to suggest to those congressmen that the regulations which protect them need to be lifted?
You're right. To clarify, in the US, the problem is partly related to campaign finance, yes, because this vehicle is available to lobbyists to influence politicians.
But my point is, if you remove this vehicle the problem doesn't go away, it just takes another form.
And in fact I think it's good that it takes the form of campaign finance, because at least it's visible: you can see who gives how much money to which man / party / cause.
And anyway, politicians don't care about "freedom"; they care about big companies, because they have dinner with CEOs; they care about "jobs" because they think that's what matters to their constituents. Solving campaign finance wouldn't change any of that.
You know what Ron Paul would say about this... It's not campaign finance reform that's needed, its decreasing the power of the gov't to have so much power. That's the root cause, not the money.
I don’t think that those are the problems. I think it’s the money from a tiny group of wealthy individuals.
Limit that to no more than $1000 per natural person per year and make it illegal for entities that are not natural persons to contribute any money (PACs, companies, etc).
Contribution to political campaigns should mostly be by time, volunteering to work for a campaign.
Dont see how it would fix this. The donor class absolutely wants this fixed, how would campaign finance reform help get this passed when donors already want it passed?
With vastly more money available, politicians would have to spend far less, both in time and favors, to finance their campaigns.
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