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?

Something strikes me about this discussion. It seems the problem lies how to control the campaigning.

I see 2 problems that caused the first one:

1)Education of voters.

I think the problem lies in educating the voters. I believe this is about starting with the kids, school shouldn't be solely focused on teaching kids "facts". In my opinion it is equally (if not more) important to teach kids to be critical towards the information that get thrown at them.

If the part of the voters who react simply on a tv-add is to high then there is a need for education

2) The presidental system

The fact that one man is handed such great power will always cause a tough battle for that seat. I live in Denmark. We have a prime minister elected by Congress (or what is more or less the same as congress). In other words if i want influence on who should be prime minister i can do 2 things: 1) run for "congress" 2) vote on the party (we have around 10 different parties) that has my "favorite" as candidate.

I'm not saying this system is better, just different.

I see now (after writing this) that since 2) will always be there , there will always be some kind of problem in relation to campaigning. Education can only limit the influence campaigning has.

Frank,
a system where political donations are anonymous is already in place in a number of European countries. It is indeed a workable system. As for your second idea, I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that on election day I can drive to a neighbouring district and vote there? Why? Why should I have any say in who represents that district? I am amazed that the incumbant re-election numbers are so high! Do people really feel that they do such a good job? Who do people blame when something is worng such as high uinemployment? The president?

Paul.

How would anonymous donations prevent the richest from having the most influence as they know? If anything, it'd make it harder to determine if they are being funded completely big businesses or not.

Anonymous donations mean that the candidates and political parties do not know who provided the donation. More importantly they don't know the size of donations or where they come from. They just receive the donations through a neutral body.

A candidate therefore feels no obligation towards anyone as they have no idea who funded their election campaign. It's designed to remove the risk of donors having undue influence on politicians.

Paul.

That makes sense. It does seem like a good idea.