Campaign Finance Reform In Less Than 140 Characters
Posted by: emperor in Campaign Finance, Election Reform, Politics, tags: 10 Points Of Change, campaign contributions, Campaign Finance Law, PoliticsCandidates may only accept donations, of any kind, from individual registered voters, eligible to vote for that candidate.
If you can’t vote, you can’t donate. It’s really that simple.
In political campaigns, money is more akin to a vote than it is to speech.
Corporations can’t vote. Unions can’t vote. Political Parties can’t vote. All the various groups, committees, foundations, think tanks, etc can’t vote. Foreigners can’t vote. Non-citizens can’t vote. Lobbyist can only vote where they are registered and eligible.
With that as a the standard, anything that promotes a candidate would be considered a contribution to the candidate and can only be done, paid for, provided by, a registered voter eligible to vote for the candidate. Individual rights to free speech are protected, playing field is level, and the rules are uniform across the board.
The result of this single one line change would be:
- Lower cost of campaigns
- Less TV, Radio and Print advertising
- Encourage more debates and town halls
- More use of the Internet
- Reduced lobbyist influence
- Improved quality of candidates
- More citizen involvement
- More accountability to voters
- Reduced interference from outsiders
- Increase voter registration and voting
Makes sense. Sounds good. But like a lot of sensible, good ideas, probably won’t happen. Because nobody wants to give up their exception to the rule. The power brokers would lose their power. Control would revert to the people and thats the last thing that anyone vested in the current system wants.
Want to test my theory that this idea will be attacked from all sides? Click the link below to post it to your Twitter status
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