An interesting topic was hit upon in the "Who Will You Vote for in 2008" thread, and that is the public funding of election campaigns. One of the main problems with the current system of elections is that in order to have a hope of winning, a candidate must raise millions of dollars to spread their campaign slogans and their ideals. To do this candidates must seek the backing of one of the major political parties (Democrats or Republicans) in order to have a chance at winning the election. This has resulted in a heavy two party system that really shuts out any other "radical" candidates that don't fit the mainstream ideals of these parties. What has been proposed is that contributions to the parties, or candidates, from any source be prohibited. This means no more personal contributions of millions of dollars (which result in small favors and kickbacks later on down the line) and especially no more corporate contributions (which have already been limited but then just usually take the form of personal contributions). Both of these types of contributions start what could be labeled as a type of "corruption" within our government, Democrat or Republican. This is not a partisan issue. It is true of all politicians. It happens on a daily basis. There are reasons that popular legislation regarding different industries take a long time to go through and often lack the needed teeth to get the job done. Under this new idea, candidates would be required to no longer accept donations to their individual campaigns, and instead the contributions would go to a general fund that all candidates could use. They would be allotted a certain amount of money. The more candidates (which could simply be limited) the less funding. The taxpayers would then foot the rest of the bill (don't scream, this wouldn't be as much of a problem as it sounds). This would drastically limit the number of ads that candidates would be running, especially the less effective "dirty" ads. Candidates would then be allowed to use only public channels to reach their constituents, such as organizations like NPR (National Public Radio), Government Access Channels, Websites(but not internet ads), speeches, and debates. While this would certainly give the entertainment networks more control over what air time different candidates get, I think this would be offset by the number of different outlets would be available. So give your opinion. Would you be in favor of a system similar to this?
*Bump* I can't believe no one read this topic! You are all horrible voters . Now that we're closer to primaries, you might want to give it a look-see?
nope i wouldn't my reasons are subtle but obvious *radicals* suck, party's will support anyone who they think has a chance at winning and anyone who has any political skill (needed for a president) that is radical is sure to find some people to fund him/her and the more mainstream their ideas are and the more worth they hold the easier it would be to get that backing that s/he rightly would deserve. does this make any sense? (myself. not u jon, poor poor jon)
I would definitely support public financing of elections, and sorry I never saw your thread before. First, just look at it from a point of view of our national budget. Our country wastes billions of dollars every year on pork barrel spending and on hand outs to major donars, think about the multi billion dollar subsidies for oil companies. We may end up spending tax dollars on campaigns but I'm certain that this amount would end up being less than the amount of money that is saved by our politicians not owing favors. Now look at all the bad legislation out there that is written by lawyers for the industries that the legislation seeks to regulate. Bankers and crediters wrote the god awful Bankrupcy laws and credit laws that are now resulting in a huge number of foreclosures. Again, the root of the problem is that politicans have an incentive in making these people happy; take away the incentive and problem, mostly, solved. Also, about advertising. It is quite feasable that the government could require cable and networks channles to run a limited number of political ads free of charge. The government already regulates these medias so requiring them to show a small amount of advertising wouldn't be a real problem. @Tweak, I disagree. I don't think it should be the parties that do the filtering of the candidate field. I think it should be the voters. Simply make it so that a person needs a certain number of signatures on a petition to get public financing. If a real wako can get enough support to get financing they still have to get through the primary system, and if they are truly out of touch then they should lose. If they somehow win they still have to survive the general, if they win there then maybe they really weren't wako's in the first place. Maybe their views, which the establishment considered wako, were in fact more in line with the general population than the establishment's views. P.S. so basically my last paragraph means I think for example, the DCCC shouldn't be able to give their financial backing to their perfered candidate in a primary election. I think all candidates who meet the requirements should get the same amount of money for their campaign. On another note, I am in favor of instant runoff voting so that there is not advatage or disadvantage to having a third or fourth party candidate in a race. This would work by a person choosing their first and second and third ect choice of candidate on the ballot. Then their vote counts towards which ever of the two candidates that had the most first choice votes they most prefered. So lets say there is an election with four candidates. A voter would then choose their first, second, and third favorites. Lets say their first favorite got the thrid most votes as first choice. So their vote for that person would be discarded and their second choice would be examined. Lets say their second choice got fourth, well that one would be disgarded as well and their vote would count to their third favorite candidate who has to be one of the top 2 candidates when there are four candidates. This allows for more than two parties without the problems discussed in Federalist 10.
voters don't know any better for this one class project (pshyc) we made a bill against women's suffrage and a bunch of women signed it not knowing any better. just because it sounded good. a large partion of the vote are one issue voters and that is the worst way to vote the political partys at least know whats up and check up on their candidates. I am one of the few people that think if you have an awesome idea you probably can find someone to fund it.
Nice. In my mock government I submitted a bill to secede from the Union (still legal, by the way) and we did it. We convened a state convention, supposedly, to decide whether to secede. Lol. Anyway, overall I think this is a rather decent idea. The first time I thought about it was in the car one day when we were discussion the elections and how retarded it is that we only hear from 2-3 candidates when there are always 10-15 actually running. It's just a disgrace that we can only really choose from two candidates because of this party system. I don't think this new system would promote "radicals," it would just promote other ideas that are often muffled by the major parties, such as abortion and civil rights. These issues would be more in the forefront because more candidates would use them as crusading causes. The real reason I think this would have such a positive effect would be that it would almost eliminate kickbacks that these politicians engage in to win. I mean, realistically, where is all this money coming from? There's a reason that environmental legislation takes so long to be put through and that denials of Global Warming occur in the face of evidence. They recognize the problems but they can't do anything about them without causing discontent in their base. If we eliminate the source of their contributions and force them to rely on the opinions of voters alone and their true stance on the issues, we might end up with an overall better system. Obviously this same system could be enacted on a smaller scale with local and state elections.
Sure you can get anyone to sign anything provided you use confusing enough language, look at the people who fall for preditory lending. However, this is why we have a media and blogs. If someone tried to sneak something like that into actual legislation it would very likely be caught and exposed. If it wasn't the bad legislation would likely end up being overturned in courts or fixed in future legislation. This is why a democracy requires a healthy media to scrutinize the government's actions. Our current traditional media is suffering in that regard but the vacume has been largely filled by blogs which did up alot of that kind of crap and it eventually filters back into the traditional media. The theory behind a democracy is that provided a sufficently well educated population, the majority opinion of that population will be correct more often than the minority opinion and that any mistakes made by the majority will quickly be reversed, quickly being a relative term. I don't know the details of your psych project but I'm assuming you probably gave a piece of paper to someone and had them read it and asked if they agreed. Decisions made alone or with a small group of people over a very short period of time can be bad decisions. I would guess that if you got a sizable group of people together, say a dozen, and had them read and discuss the idea for half an hour they would see the document for what it is. Sure most people get all their info in short sound bites but there are people who spend a great deal of time examining the details of politics and reporting that information and eventually most people get fairly well informed. Now as for single issue voters, I agree, voting for someone based on a single issue is a terrible idea. However, our current system does nothing to help this and I cannot see how public financing would do any thing to encourage it more. Over the past few years I've become very familiar with internal party politics, for the Democratic party at least. I've seen situations where the party's choice went up against a grassroots candidate in primaries with varying results. Frankly I don't think its right for the party to give financial preference to a single candidate. That's how it currently works in our system, and I think the party should be able to voice its opinion but not through large sums of money. Generally, grassroots candidates only emerge if the really are connecting with the people. People who are disconnected rarely are grassroots candidates since, almost by definition, a grassroot candidate's views must be in line with a large number of people's views. Often, parties will end up backing such candidates as they clearly show themselves to be good candidates by being able to build their campaign from the ground up. Occasionally though the party has another candidate in mind. For a small number of people, the leadership of the state party or a few people in the DCCC/NRCC or DSCC/NRSC to be able have a disproportionate voice is anti democratic. Everyone's say throughout the campaign should be roughly the same. A normal person can give as much time as they wish supporting a candidate and a maximum of $2300. A party organization should have no more say than that. People donate to the party then the party decides what to do with that money. In most circumstances they are helpful, they ususally support no one in primaries, and if they do its usually the person with the most support, and they do a lot of good in general elections, they problem is when they support an establishment candidate over a grassroots candidate in a primary when both are very serious contenders and have large bases of support. Then you have a small number of people controlling a large amount of money that was given to them by people who support the general platform of the party. That all said, this is a very minor part of the whole issue of public financing. The much larger issue is severing ties between politicians and big money interests. P.S. it also has the effect of assisting third party candidates as they have a rather severe fundrasing handicap.
I'm not really sure how to tell you this, and it may hurt you deeply, but the truth is that politicians can break the law. That's right, the very people we put in office to help establish and uphold laws and regulations break them. Which brings me to this question: If politicians don't follow campaign law NOW...why would they follow it after your idea? I don’t think you can comprehend how many ways there are to do underhanded bribes, how many work arounds there are. I don’t think you can because even I can’t think of all the ways there are to pass money under the table. Hell, one particular presidential candidate has already demonstrated a disdain for campaign law. Would it work “in theory� I don’t know, but I couldn’t care less if theory will never meet reality. But the money goes into a general pile right? That doesn't solve the problem. Private Jets can be lent. Buses can have an indefinite lease of 100$ a year. Ads can be run by private organizations to attack candidates (though not support one). And since all the "strong" politicians will count on all these things (and more), the only people to suffer will be the candidates your trying to help, who WOULDN'T get that jet or bus or ad, because they don't have the connections. They couldn't even use their own money as a last resort. All they get is a table scrap public fund that close to no one will donate to, though the public gets to foot another bill (yay, even more of my money taken for a "noble" cause I don't support). But, if all we go on is opinion... Politicians get money from people they know. These people bet millions on nothing but a promise. And that's how we know a politician has potential leadership, and that's how the want-to-be presidents get separated from the people who may actually win. If there were simply a giant public fund, there would be no reason for everyone and their poodle not to try and run. That violates the First Amendment. I'd give you about a .5% chance of getting politicians to change it for you. So, before you comment, answer these questions: 1. Why is you idea constitutional? 2. How would you stop half the country from running? 3. How would you ensure an undeniably biased media would be fair? 4. How could this idea EVER be implemented, since neither party would support it? (I’ll explain why if you need me to) I'll fight any idea that isn't close to fool proof that demands tax payer money to death. We already spend more then half our income on taxes, I don't want to pay a cent more.
1. Why is your idea constitutional? I don't see how this is a violation of the First Amendment. Candidates simply wouldn't be allowed to use funds gathered from fundraising to buy ads on cable channels and billboards, etc. They would be restricted, by public funding, to avenues like NPR and other established ways of contacting the public, such as government access channels, in order to keep the cost to the taxpayers low. It's not like we're going to be shelling out billions of dollars for this. In fact, I would assume that this system wouldn't cost the taxpayers any more than the current election system does, or at least not by a large margin. We wouldn't be paying for all these ads, etc., we'd just be forcing them into smaller venues. Plus, their personal funds would still be available for their use. If they really wanted to spend that 10 million on campaign ads on cable, they could. But the entire idea here is to even the playing field not make it completely flat. Of course candidates with more name recognition are still going to do well, but this way at least the third party candidates will have exposure and won't be completely stomped out of the limelight. 2. How would you stop half the country from running? Half the country runs NOW! Constitutionally anyone who wants to run can. The same system would be in place for determining whether a candidate could run. They would be required to gather petitions in any state they want to be on the ballot before they would become a candidate. This won't be any more of a problem than it is now. In fact, better candidates that are small-time will start appearing. 3. How would you ensure an undeniably biased media would be fair? There is already regulation in place that says a network must give equal time to any candidates they put on the air. So if Hilary Clinton is on air for 5 minutes, all the other candidates also have the right to 5 minutes on the air. This doesn't apply to news stories, however. But this is where the public funding comes in. The public channels, NPR, Government Access, etc. are all "free" really. Candidates would be allowed to use those venues at a set rate and would be able to spread their platform that way. But as far as the regular cable channels go, public funding would have to be used to form more debates and require these channels to cover those debates, much as it is now. Also, a tradition, much like that of the bully-pulpit (news agencies are all but required to televise any speech the President requests) could be instated. Set dates on which the channels would be compensated, but their programming would be dedicated to Presidential candidates for a "show" of an hour or so. Like debates. Of course, you can't deny the influence of the media, but that's just as much a problem now and is totally separate from election corruption. 4. How could tis idea EVER be implemented, since neither party would support it? Believe me, I completely see why the parties wouldn't want to support it. Would you? They have a solid grip on power. There's no reason for them to support the enactment of this system. But if you think about it, if they truly think they have the "best" candidates and platforms, they would be all for this system. But, at the base of the issue, this is about taking power away from the two party system. Right now they don't even try to answer the issues that need to be addressed. They basically put a guy up that looks good and then run hundreds of ads about why he's better than the opponent. And for millions of Americans that could give a crap about what goes on (although they might outwardly think they care), that's enough. I don't expect the parties to support this measure. I expect this system to be set up despite what they want because the majority of Americans would want it. Do I really expect this sytem to be implemented? No. It's not a realistic hope. But maybe, just maybe, if everyone realized that the system needs to change, something like this might be enacted.
you know that we have right and left in our country which are supposed to be equal to democrats and republicans, but after a recent test it was found out that both american parties are right and none are left, that means no enviromentalists and stuff, i could look it up.
Well, you're correct in the statement that both major political parties in the US are more "right" than most political parties in Europe and large chunks of the rest of the world, that doesn't mean that certain views aren't being represented, it just means that they don't get a party to themselves, or their influence is mixed in with various other goals of a major party.
@ijffdrie the Democratic party at the moment in a centrist party. However, there is a liberal branch of the Democratic party, the progressive wing, there is also a very very centerist branch of the party the DLC. The Republican party is an extreme right party. Though, their party is also split into branches. They've got the religious right, fiscal conservatives, neocons( second cousins to neofascists ) and what many people call the "Law & Order" cons. There are eviromentalists, the progressive wing of the Democratic party is very much for helping our environment and to a certain extent so is the DLC and even some of the religious right. Look at former VP and Nobel Lauriet Al Gore. The problem isn't that don't have people who support helping the evironment the problem is big money inerests who oppose changes to help the environment who give money to candidates, legally. @Shadowdragon, this idea posted by Jon is not a new thing by any stretch of the imagination. The concept of publicly financing of elections has been around for a while and is slowly building support as people get sick of the corruption in DC. You don't need to tell me politicians break the law; we're living under the most corrupt presidential administration in histroy. Hell the Jack Abromof scandal broke not all that long ago. Yes politicians take a lot of hand outs, that's why we need public financing, as well as even stricter lobbying reform. We need to close off the legal "bribes" that politicians can recieve. That is a much bigger problem than the illegal birbes and violations of campaign finance laws, which have ended the careers of countless politicians. Will this be hard to get passed, hell yes, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. As demand for public financing of elections grows over the next few years, eventually it will be passed. The issue just has to grow large enough for it to become a major issue in congressional campaigns.
