Campaign financing has long been an avenue for buying influence from politicians. The unfortunate Supreme Court decision in Citizen’s United case worsened the problem exponentially. Many describe our current campaign finance system as one of flagrant and endemic bribery. Limiting campaign contributions prevents wealthy individuals, corporations, or pooled-resource groups (unions, industry consortiums, issue-based organizations, etc.) from gaining influence by campaign donations.
Comments are welcome below. All comments must be respectfully written and not contain misinformation or fallacious reasoning. We welcome thoughtful dialogue of differences.
The necessary expenses of a candidate or representative for conducting a campaign could be borne by the government. This would ensure that expenses be kept to a minimum- the taxpayers hate having their money spent in the first place. By necessary expenses, I mean filing fees, a website, and a phone bank. If the candidate wants massive TV ads, he can buy them out of his own pocket.
Candidates should be forbidden to accept donations, period. If a political party, corporation or wealthy person wants to support a particular candidate or measure, they are of course free under the First Amendment to spend as much as they like promoting their views. They just can’t give money to the actual candidate; that would create serious conflicts of interest.
For that matter, political parties should be forbidden to accept huge donations from business and interest groups. Allowing that has created a monopolistic party system so anticompetitive that, if they were businesses, they could be prosecuted for racketeering. Donations from individuals, large and small, should be sufficient to operate a political party, and will make it more responsive to what the everyday citizen wants their party to do.
The current system has led to $9 billion corporate-sponsored TV extravaganzas masquerading as elections. It’s time to scrap the whole corrupt mess.
Great! Now, limits on campaigning time?
Good point, but this might be hard to reconcile with freedom of speech. How would you differentiate campaigning from other speech?
The necessary expenses of a candidate or representative for conducting a campaign could be borne by the government. This would ensure that expenses be kept to a minimum- the taxpayers hate having their money spent in the first place. By necessary expenses, I mean filing fees, a website, and a phone bank. If the candidate wants massive TV ads, he can buy them out of his own pocket.
Candidates should be forbidden to accept donations, period. If a political party, corporation or wealthy person wants to support a particular candidate or measure, they are of course free under the First Amendment to spend as much as they like promoting their views. They just can’t give money to the actual candidate; that would create serious conflicts of interest.
For that matter, political parties should be forbidden to accept huge donations from business and interest groups. Allowing that has created a monopolistic party system so anticompetitive that, if they were businesses, they could be prosecuted for racketeering. Donations from individuals, large and small, should be sufficient to operate a political party, and will make it more responsive to what the everyday citizen wants their party to do.
The current system has led to $9 billion corporate-sponsored TV extravaganzas masquerading as elections. It’s time to scrap the whole corrupt mess.