A realistic fear many people have is that a politician can receive a gross amount of money and win an election unfairly due to better funding. This can happen for a number of reasons, namely by representing the wealthier portion of the country, or the wealthiest. How we can stop this from happening is by giving popular candidates a government funded election budget while banning political donations. Why is this a problem? Simple. A politician who would normally receive less votes will win an election, and impose something the people don't want. This could be anything, a new tax hike, a cut to a relief program, an expansion of government, a new war, or an attack on the constitution. Imagine the candidate you hate imposing something like that due to the sponsorship of billionaires, you would be galvanized with anger. This needs to be illegal. Democratic principles, like having fair elections, are being broken when one when a wealthy few control an election over many. There are obviously some arguments against this. For instance why pay for this with a tax increase which could cost jobs? Well, what do taxes do? They take money from people and give it to the government to spend. Political donations are exactly like that economically. They are collected from the people for the candidates to spend. It costs jobs when donors don't spend the money they give to politicians. So remember, this plan will strengthen our democracy, and it will not hurt the economy. Please respond if you would support this plan.
I would support it. In the 90's and early 2000's I volunteered for clean elections and getting money out of politics. It's the only sensible way to run a democracy. Unfortunately, it's a steep mountain of money to climb.
Let's look at what lead to the current situation, the "Citizens United" ruling by the supreme court. Why did they make that call? Too many corrupt, conservative judges, appointed by Republican Presidents, who do not see the conflict.
Money doesn't buy elections. If you have two people with lots of money then the money is no longer a factor. There have been plenty of races where the super-rich candidate lost so your theory has been proven incorrect numerous times. Super-pacs had absolutely no impact in this election and probably never will so there's really no need. Super-pacs have actually made the race more fair by ensuring that neither of the major candidates has a money advantage unlike Obama who outspent McCain 3 to 1 in 2008. You'll never see that disparity again. Citizen's United was actually one of the best decisions this Court has made. It brought fairness to the election.
I would like to see public funding of elections with all the special interest money removed from the process. But it's not going to happen. You would need constitutional amendments to get there and they are not easily passed.
What special interest money are you talking about? You mean donations to a campaign? So you are only in favor of certain people contributing to the candidates? Next your going to say that only white land-owners can vote.
Why is that fair? What if I don't want to support any of the candidates but now your going to force me to? How in the world do you find that American? It goes against every principle in our Constitution.
Eligible candidates would need to have enough names on petitions to qualify for the funds. This would open up the process and bring it back to the people and take the power of the vested interests away. But have no worry as I said it will not happen. Elections and our political system will remain in the hands of the people who pay the bills for it currently.
Why are you in favor of eliminating groups that have an interest in the election? You are going to pick and choose who's opinions matter now? Madison in Federalist #10 warned of the danger of factions but warned that trying to limit them is far worse. You should listen to one of the biggest Founding Fathers who probably knew a bit more about this than you do.
Madison could have never foreseen how much the world has changed. I do not defer to some primitive thank you very much.
You obviously don't know and haven't read what Madison wrote. He said that by getting rid of factions you take away a part of a persons liberty. If you and a couple of your neighbors get together and decide to support a candidate guess what, your now a special interest/faction. You would do away with this. Madison also said that factions regulate each other, they are on both sides so they balance out. Madison's views are as relevant today as they were back then.
What are you talking about? Super-pacs do not equalize campaign budgets, they are just another place people can donate to. consider this, Obama only outspent McCain by 2x and crushed McCain 365-173 in the electoral college, that's just a little over 2x (how coincidental) and you can't deny money payed a big role in that. We should not elect people based on how well the fund raise, that's not right. You have no idea what your talking about when you say we will never see that disparity again. What if the left's demographic changes to the poor and lower middle class and the right's becomes the rich to upper middle class? Assuming the starting population at the beginning of the election is split equally for both the right and left, can you honestly say that would be a fair election? wait, look at this: In this worst case scenario based on that pie chart, the right candidate would have at least 10 times the campaign budget of the left (93/7=13.3, and 13.3-3.3 for safety). That is grossly unfair. So what do we have to lose by eliminating this scenario, and other smaller unfair scenarios like this? Nothing. So why not?
Endlessly, endlessly talking about the symptom (money) while ignoring the underlying disease (government power).
