. . . but it is incredibly naive, as Pakman's co-host suggests. If anybody thinks that a corporation will donate a large sum to a candidate and NOT find a way -- law or no law -- to let the recipient know about, that person is living in a fantasy world.f And the voucher proposal is ridiculous. If we are serious about free and fair elections, then the answer is to go with complete public financing of campaigns. Such a system should include, at minimum, the following features:
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Each candidate in a given race would be provided with a fixed sum to be spent over the course of the campaign, and which must be used to cover all campaign expenses; the specific sums provided would vary according to the level of the office sought (or perhaps the most accurate way to do it would be to base the sum on the number of constituents that office serves);
Neither donor money, nor any of a candidate's personal money, could be used for any expense related to the campaign;
Campaigns would be of set duration (commencing, say, 6 months or a year prior to Election Day, and ending, of course, on Election day, and the campaign finance sums could ONLY be spent on campaign expenses incurred during these set campaign periods.
Private individuals, PACs, corporations, etc., would be free to spend all the money they wished to spend on ads endorsing a particular candidate, at all times EXCEPT during the duration of the set campaign period.
The objective here would be to take money out of the equation altogether. I think the result would be a system in which political campaigns turned much more on the various candidates' positions, and on their ability to convey their ideas under the exact same circumstances as their opponents, and significantly less on a candidate's ability to simply dominate the debate by outspending his or her opponent. And I submit that voters could compare and contrast how effectively. the respective candidates used the sums they were provided to get their message out, and the results of such observation might, in themselves, nr s factor that would help voters evaluate candidates.
= new reply since forum marked as read
- Yale you say? Home of Skull & Bones? Figures......
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