Public Campaign Finance – A Silver Bullet
From the Democracy 21 Website:
The Money Chase; Running for Dollars
An editorial appeared today in The Washington Post entitled, ”The Money Chase.”
An editorial also appeared today in The New York Times entitled, ”Running for Dollars.”
The editorials support legislation to repair the presidential public financing system for future elections and urge presidential candidates to agree to accept public financing in the 2008 presidential general election.
As I wade through all of the unceasing political controversies we read and write about I wonder what would put us on a path of increasing the likelihood that we are electing representatives who value collaboration, pragmatism, fairness, balance, long term solutions… I continually return to promoting public campaign finance as the best use of my resources.
One reason that I post about this regularly is that the Moderate Voice is one of the leading communities visited by Moderates, Centrists and Independents also open to trans-partisan solutions that work for the majority of citizens.
opinions powered by SendLove.to
18 Responses to “Public Campaign Finance – A Silver Bullet”
There should be no private money funding election campaigns in my opinion. Nothing should be able to subvert the “one person, one vote” authority of the public. Concentrations of money should never be allowed to be a leverage against the majority. Private funding of campaigns does not save the public as much as it cheats them of their Constitutional right to rule.
I agree with Paul and White Agent. It’s only natural that politicians would be swayed so much by special interests. After all it’s those special interests that largely helped them get elected.
The current situation looks like the run-up to a grand sale dale. The news last week spent less time analyzing and comparing the policy positions of candidates than their campaign funds.
The whole field of mixing money and politics is increasingly worrisome. Mayor Bloomberg touts the fact that he finances his own campaigns as a sign of independence from special interests, and there is truth to that. But it also gives him an unfair advantage over someone who, say, was born in a log cabin.
We have to get back to valuing ideas and performance instead of pocket books.
Since my dream before I die is to see libertarian candidates have a viable shot, I’m all for it.
While the article seems to be focusing on individual candidate financing, I hope they are not brushing aside the 527 issue.
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptI continually return to promoting public campaign finance as the best use of my resources. One reason that I post about this regularly is that the Moderate Voice is one of the leading communities visited by Moderates, Centrists and … [...]
I see one key to campaign finance reform as deflating the money necessary to run. And as you are most likely aware, internet campaigning is really picking up steam. And the advantage to that is that the candidates don’t need the same level of money they did in the past to get their word out…they can take advantage of the free communication offered by the internet, thus breaking the stranglehold so long held by mainstream media on the process.
So to encourage that process, I created a website that compares candidates by issue:
It’s my attempt to bring some sort of logical order to the process. And you will note…I included “Campaign Reform” as one of the issues, even though I have found very few videos on the subject.
Thoughts? Feedback? Does anyone else agree that the internet is as close to a “silver bullet” as we currently have?
gary
I somehow managed to butcher my last post…here ’tis…
http://www.ExpertVoter.org
gary
Gary,
The internet may help a little for a national election or an election in California, the internet probably hurts local elections. How do you reach voters about a state representative election or county commissioner election when people are reading newssites from across the world.
Chris,
Publoic financing doe not get special interest out of politics, it just changes the special interest. Public financing would give NGOs like Public Interest Research Group, moveon.org, and public sector unions a huge advantage. It would cripple the chamber of commerence though.
If you want politics to be like France, wouldn’t it be easier to move to France instead of moving France’s political system here?
I think there are ways to get the same goal with a more free-market-like approach. Currently there are maximums for campeign contributions, but there are more than most people make in a year. What if your maximum contriubtion was something like $100. Now even the super wealthy wouldn’t be able to give more than the poor. This still has problems with organizations such as Swift Boat Vets, but then again, so does public financing.
Kevin,
Now you promised to act like a centrist when here.
There, I fixed that for you since you must have thought you were still over at Kos.
There will always be “special interests” per se, but their power should derive from the number of votes they can muster, rather than the amount of money they can spend.
Chris,
Public financing give a huge advantage to those who have the most man-hours (not just individuals) to an election. That means that professional activist (generally on the left), professional students, and those who can hide their spending inside their organization are the ones who benefit.
Those on right who have to get up and go to work everyday can no longer substitute money for time. The only people who can be active in poitics are those special interest where the people have time.
Gary, I like the site very much. I think it might need a bit of a redesign when the campaign goes on longer and there won’t be a single YouTube clip that can summarize a candidates views on a large topic, but excellent rough draft in my opinion.
For a bit, I thought I almost agreed with Mit Romney then I clicked on Energy, Taxes, and Campaign Reform….. wow
heh, thanx casualobserver. I would certainly include liberal groups as part of the problem too.
SD, there’s no reason ‘professional activists’ couldn’t act for the right. It’s just not a strategy the right needs to employ right now. If public financing were enacted the right might need to shift strategy, but it wouldn’t be any sort of institutional bias.
Also, I can’t find the stats right now, but I know I’ve seen data to show that the poorer you are, the more likely to are to vote democratic, and the richer are more likely to vote republican. So if anything it would benefit republican party more. But I think the results would be negligible.
Kevin,
Republicans are middle and upper middle class whites who live in the exurbs and the smaller towns. Democrats are the ultra-rich (Manhatten is 80% Democratic, the poorest whites, and minorities. The demographic groups that have the best ability to get people to provide manhours are the left side of the Democratic Party. I cannot think of a single Republican demographic group that could legally provide campaign support under any system administraterd by Democrats.
If you want Congress to be dominated by Bernie Sanders clones, public financing of elections is the way to go. The Democrats would lose some candidates such as Maria Cantawell, John Dayton, Jon Corzine, etc. But the Republicans would lose many more.
If would also return power to the career politicians and end the idea of getting into politics later in life. Public financing would give the Congressional Black Congress a huge amount of power but would destroy any Republican based caucus.
Kevin:
> I think it might need a bit of a redesign when the campaign goes on longer and there won’t be a single YouTube clip that can summarize a candidates views on a large topic, but excellent rough draft in my opinion.
I’m not sure I understand. The goal is not to collect every (or even more than one) video by any one candidate per issue. As I see it a candidate needs the ability to summarize his position on any given issue within a five minute video. That doesn’t mean every detail, but rather an overview of the position. Besides, even with one video per candidate-issue, the total viewing time is already very large. Multiple? Yikes!
gary
[...] Public Campaign Finance – A Silver BulletI continually return to promoting public campaign finance as the best use of my resources. One reason that I post about this regularly is that the Moderate Voice is one of the leading communities visited by Moderates, Centrists and … [...]