infidelagent

Here's one for ya. A hypothetical scenario. What if, when one was to donate to a political party, it was to be in the form of a PERSONAL cheque. It would be illegal to make a donation in the name of a corporation, a union, an interest group and lobby groups etc. If Bill Gates or Ted Turner or the head of the Teamsters or the NRA, or John Doe wanted to make a contribution to his favourite political party, the ONLY legal way would be to get out HIS cheque book and sign HIS name to it. I'm sure there are probably individuals within these organizations who might disagree with the groups politics and would resent their affiliation with this donation. FOR THE SAKE OF AN ARGUMENT, what if it was absolutely ILLEGAL for ANY political party, federal, state(provincial) or municipal to accept ANY donation unless it was in the form of personal cheque or whatever, as long as it was ONE IDENTIFIABLE PERSON donating it. What do you see the outcome of this being in later election campaigns and for election strategists. I pose this questions to both Americans and us Canadians.

yaktldg

I would go further than that and suggest elections be funded (equally) by the government with tax-payer money, and to ban all donations.

8of9

For "these organizations" substitute "the taxpaying public".

Just a thought.

admice

You would lose all traceablility. What would probably happen is joe schmoe would give money to person X who actually writes the check, but he could just be collecting from all kinds of lobbies or corporations and no way to tell. Can't really justify auditing every individual campaign contributor. Plus then there would be invasion of privacy issues.

I like the idea of only publicly funded campaigns, but of course then you run into the possibility of fraud, but that's already inherent in government.

infidelagent

This is all possible but if Joe Schmoe is earning minimum wage and donates $10,000,000 then I think it would raise a red flag. At the other end of the spectrum if someone of higher income donates a large amount of money, it is he who gets the tax write-off and who's to say he doles it back accordingly. I should also have mentioned that it must be withdrawn from the donor's personal chequing account. I can't help but think it would stop alot of the bribery or greasing that is such common practice today.

Loren Pechtel

Meaningless. As it is companies give bonuses to employees with the understanding that they'll use the money for appropriate political contributions.

Loren Pechtel

Agreed. However, I don't think much is even needed. Forget political campaigns, scrap them. Instead, each candidate gets plenty of bandwidth and storage on high quality servers and a chunk of money for web designers and support staff.

The *ENTIRE* campaign would consist of the websites and debates. I believe this would produce a far more informative campaign than we currently have.

Outside groups would be permitted to endorse candidates and present evaluations of how candidates stack up on issues relevant to that organization. These could be posted on websites or put in already-existing newsletters. That's it.

Loren Pechtel

Require a certain number of signatures to get on the ballot at all. These must be gathered by volunteers only. (Note: Reduce the # required because this is harder than the current system.) Pass that hurdle and you get $x based on the number of voters in your area last general election, adjusted for population growth. You must account for how the $ are spent. There would still be some fraud but not all that much. The losses would be a *LOT* less than under the current system.

admice

Loren regarding the webspace idea: less than 30% of american households have a computer. I agree about free, equal airtime, debates, paper campaigning.

redstar2000

How about this one?

All campaigning is in the form of taxpayer-funded written materials; leaflets, pamphlets, newspapers, web sites.

We only know them as candidate A, B, C, etc. We have no idea what they look like, what their personal lives are like, even what gender they are or how old they are.

If they've held public office before, they may tell us in general terms what public experience they've had...but not in such a way as to be readily identifiable.

Any citizen may nominate themselves for any office; runoffs to be held as needed. (single-term limit for all offices.)

Elections will be decided on...

personal appearance/image/spin 0%

campaign contributions 0%

prior experience ?%

ability to articulate positions
on public issues that appeal
to voters 90%+

Worth a try?