• Campaign Finance Reform / Public Funding of Elections – what it would take

  Posted by Unknown Member on December 28, 2004 at 4:37 AM

  You are going to run for office in a public funding of elections campaign program.

  1) gather signatures to be on the ballot. In a local election, easier to do. In a big election (county, state, or national), your organization of volunteers helps you do this.

  2) an allotted amount is due to the candidates for campaigning. Let’s say it is $10,000,000, and there are 5 candidates:

  Republican
  Democrat
  Libertarian
  Green
  Communist

  Each gets enough signatures and support to qualify (based on some criteria pre-established – like how many signatures required, etc.) – they each get $2,000,000 to spend on their campaign however they see fit (direct mail, TV, radio, town hall rentals for public meetings, etc.)

  Plus they also each get to debate when they are all together and its televised, with equal time to each of them.

  3) The Top 2 vote-getters go into a run-off, unless any 1 candidate got 51% of the vote in the primary. The run-off has an established budget.

  4) NO INDIVIDUAL, CORPORATION, OR NON-PROFIT CAN DO ANYTHING FINANCIALLY TO HELP or risk being charged with misdemeanor to felony counts of interfering with federal election law.

  FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS INFRINGED WITH REGARDS TO ELECTIONS: – you can display a campaign-paid-for-with-public-funds yard sign on your lawn, but you CANNOT CREATE YOUR OWN. If you own a billboard, you can’t put up a sign regarding the elections. If you own a house, you can’t paint “GO KERRY” or something on your roof so planes and helicopters will see it. Wealth cannot be used to manipulate how much you support a candidate. You cannot even go to Kinkos to xerox fliers and then mail them at your own expense or you will be charged with violating the law. Cell phone use for political calls at non-public-funded-phone-banks (which will be rented from telemarketing agencies, not donated by trial lawyer firms), will not be permitted either.

  In short, it will come down to one vote per person, not dollar. The playing field will be equalized.

  If someone wants to start the Jedi Council political party and can get enough signatures to be on the ballot and receive public funds, they could possibly win.

  The dominance of the Democrats and Republicans will be balanced, and this redistricting non-sense, denying people to be qualified voters, etc. will all cease.

  Thing is, it has to get put into law now, in today’s system and the politicians who are elected now will have to betray their campaign financers to make this happen.

  $10,000,000 for publicly funding campaigns is infintisemally smaller than the money wasted on “exclusive contracts” for Haliburton, protection for Pfizer, policies planned to benefit the Trial Lawyer’s Association, and laws that hurt consumers and might ultimately allow a curable problem to become so bad, it turns the patient into a worker’s comp liability when it never needed to.

  Best of all – it opens the door for YOU (yes you reading this) to run for office and get elected.

  The Government becomes “a good thing” again – as you, and more ordinary people like you, are running it to the betterment of your own and every other average American’s benefit.

  And those of you from other countries, please chime in and tell us how your system works, and what could be done to improve it.

  Unknown Member replied 20 years, 4 months ago 0 Member · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

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