On Democracy...

[Clashman]

Today I read an article on the outcome of the San Francisco mayoral election. In particular, I was struck by the following passage:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031210/ap_on_el_st_lo/san_francisco_mayor_22

Gonzalez's insurgent campaign was overwhelmed by Newsom's superior financial and organizational efforts. Newsom's campaign collected more than $3.6 million for the race, outspending Gonzalez by more than 8-to-1 and overwhelming the Greens' volunteer-driven effort.

How can anyone seriously call these democratic elections when one candidate outspends the other 8 to 1? Campaigns are on such an uneven footing that they shouldn't even be called elections anymore. From now on, I propose we refer to them as auctions, because that is what they've become in this country.

I doubt there will be difference in the upcoming presidential campaign. Dean is the richest democrat on the ballot right now, with what, 15 million in campaign funds? I think Bush right now is between 80 and 100 million. Furthermore, Bush can simply rest on his laurels knowing that he won't have to spend another penny until after the primaries. If this isn't buying your way into office, then I don't know what is.

 

[RussSchultz]

At what price would you vote for Bush? (In otherwords, I don't think its an auction--its just about obtaining name recognition)

But yes, I agree that campaign finance reform is absolutely necessary, but what to do is a very complicated question.

One option would be to ban all political advertising that wasn't government funded. But that runs afoul of the constitution, plus puts it makes me a bit squeamish about who would chose who the government funded.

Any other options you might suggest?

 

[Clashman]

At what price would you vote for Bush? (In otherwords, I don't think its an auction--its just about obtaining name recognition)

I don't think that's quite a fair comparison. I'm a pretty opinionated person, (if you haven't noticed already), and a loaded gun pointed at my temple couldn't get me to vote for Bush. But there are alot of fence-sitters in this election who make their decisions to vote based on the presidential debates, talk shows, and political advertisements, and in those cases money does in fact make a huge difference. As an example, there were plenty of people in the 2000 elections who wanted to vote for McCain, (or Nader, for a left-wing example) who chose not to because neither were financially feasable candidates.

Looking at the current race for Democratic presidential nominee, I think there are plenty of Democrats throwing their support to Dean who would have voted for Kucinich or Mosely Braun if either were financially feasable candidates, (this is assuming that they've even heard of either of them. In some ways, "name recognition" is in fact equivalent to buying votes, as those with more money can buy more "name recognition", and thus those without as much money are rarely even talked about, unless they can put together a Herculean grassroots effort like what happened in San Francisco.

One option would be to ban all political advertising that wasn't government funded. But that runs afoul of the constitution, plus puts it makes me a bit squeamish about who would chose who the government funded.

I don't think it would run afoul of the constitution to ban corporations from political advertising, and I don't think that would hurt either. In the long term, however, I think at least part of the problem will have to be solved by switching to a parliamentary system, at least in the HOR.

Also, as long as there are standardized, and fair criteria that are set up for said government funding, I don't think it would necessarily be a matter of the government "choosing" who gets the funding. One thing you could perhaps do, is set a private campaign spending cap, and that everything raised over that could go into a general fund split evenly or proportionally among all candidates whose party or who personally have reached some threshold of voter support.