Sunday, September 30, 2007
The Need for Campaign Finance Reform
I few weeks ago I blogged about the finances of the current presidential candidates. The amount of money that each candidate has at their disposal is tremendous. At this point anyone who is not independently wealthy, or does not have the resources in place to raise millions of dollars is essentially out of the running. Campaign finance reform is necessary to correct this disparity. I feel there should be caps on the amount of money that campaigns are able to spend, both in the primary season and in the general election, and these caps should extend to most interest groups trying to promote the agenda of one party over the other. At this point this kind of reform would be difficult to accomplish do to the Supreme Court ruling involving soft money; but regardless of the use of certain magic words any advertisement advocating a certain position can potentially give an advantage to one candidate over another. Ideally my perfect campaign finance reform would also involve regulations on the broadcast media for the amount they could charge candidates running for public office. I would limit the amount of money the media could charge campaigns to the cost of printing or broadcasting a specific ad, without profit to the owners. My ideas in this blog are idealistic; however, I do feel some change in campaign financing is necessary to ensure that the United States can remain a country by the people, for the people.
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4 comments:
You make a lot of great points about the problems with campaign finances. However, how much of this can really be solved? You give all these regulations and rules that should be followed but that's too much of a perfect world. Any regulation created takes a giant workload and every interest group in the country would have a team of lawyers looking for loopholes to screw the system. Instead of creating laws to punish, create laws to encourage. Ex: (These are extremely hypothetical) The candidate spending the least gets more air time. Candidates that visit universities more, and interest groups less, also get bonuses. Things like this might be better for fixing the campaign loopholes.
I also discussed the money problems in my blog. I do not think that it is fair that only people who have millions of money can run for office. There is no "law" that has requirements on how much money someone must have to run for office, but it is a well-known fact that the majority of candidates running for office are more than well-off.
I completely agree. And I think it is possible, but it starts with the candidates. How much money is spent on fancy hotel rooms, first class plane tickets, and limosines? TV ad for campaigns should be supported by non-profit, non interest groups, or simply organized by the government, more like the Public Access Channel than a commercial during the super bowl. Also, internet campaigning is relatively inexpensive. Before Howard Dean lost the Democratic nomination in 2004, he had strong supporters via the internet. I think there are inexpensive ways to become the next president of the US, it just takes some careful planning and LOTS of time.
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