A Proposal For Election Campaign Finance

My previous posts on Corporations are Not People touch on the problems of unlimited campaign contributions and "dark money". In this post, I offer a specific proposal for publicly financed campaigns that limit the public liability, and give every voter the exact same power in contributing to the campaigns of their choice.

Rather that directly financing any willing candidate, or using capped partial public funding to qualified candidates, two methods that have been used or proposed elsewhere, give every active voter (those who actually voted in any election in the past 4 years) a “debit card” with an initial amount on it that they can donate to one or more qualified/registered candidates of their choice. Such “money” to expire after 4 years, whether given to a campaign or not (thus encouragine regular voting, and limiting the total cost to taxpayers). Then, when a voter actually votes, it will be “refilled” (a few months after the election). The public pays, but the amount is limited, and everyone who votes gets the same amount. Candidates have to convince voters they are the most worthy of donating funds to. Those who don’t vote for more than 4 years, won’t have money to donate until after they vote again. Candidates would be required file reports showing how the money was used, and can be required to repay any amounts that were used for improper or illegal purposes, and/or be banned from being a candidate future elections for a period of years.

Note, I'm not hooked on the 4 year timeframe, that's the minimum I would support. But I don't think it should be more than 8 years. Anyone who doesn't vote for a long time, while knowing these rules, clearly isn't really interested anyway.

Advantages:
• This eliminates all foreign and corporate campaign money. Campaign contributions can come only from registered voters.
• The “money” on the voter's card can only be given to, and used by, a properly registered candidate. It won’t work at stores, etc.
• You can further limit contributions to allow donations only to candidates who will be on the ballot in that voter’s precinct, thus candidates will solely be financed by their own constituents. No outside funding, the elections will not be influenced by outside interests.
• Unused campaign funds can be automatically returned to the Treasury 60-180 days after the election.

You can even have separate pools of money for federal, state, and county/locality elections, funded and amounts controlled, by the respective govt entity.

All of this is relatively easy to do using existing debit card payment technologies.

See my post on PACs, Parties, Corporate, and individual activities. for info on allowed and disallowed activities related to campaigns.