Fair Campaign Finance Reform

[Marat]

To avoid democracy being deformed by money having a vote in addition to people, many countries have adopted restrictions on political campaign financing. Some allocate money to political parties based on their performance in the previous election, which unfairly entrenches the existing political power structure. Others allow private contributions only up to a certain amount, but this limit is always higher than the average voter can afford to spare, thus favoring the rich in what is supposed to be an equal democratic process. The ultimate goal of all reform efforts has to be to make campaign financing reflect the voter equality which is essential to democracy.

 

One way to do this would be to assign every registered voter a certain amount of money in a national election expenditures 'bank' every year which could be devoted to political purposes. All political activity could be paid for only through checks drawn on the account of each voter. Voters, in turn, could direct the bank to disburse the funds in their own account to any person registering as a candidate or to any organization registering as a political party. These funds could only be spent on political activity, and the bank could monitor this by its control over disbursement of money.

 

Thus in the United States, for example, in the 2008 federal election there were about 150,000,000 registered voters and about $6 billion was spent on the campaigns. Allowing for further spending for state and local campaigns, say the national campaign funding bank could assign each registered voter $20 of political expenditures every year. People would be free to save this money and accumulate it for national elections, or could assign any portion of it to any candidates they wished for state, local, or federal elections. If they did not want to support any candidates or felt the political process was illegitimate, they could refuse to allocate the money and it would be returned to the federal treasury. People could not buy political influence with this money since the allocations of funds to candidates by the election bank would be anonymous and the $20 limit would not give any one individual much influence.

 

If constitutional, this seems a much fairer, more democratic system than any of those now in place in any Western democracy.

[iNow]

Not a bad idea. Anything would be better than it is right now.

 

 

Elite Wall Street Donations Jumped 700% in the Last 20 Years

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/elite-wall-street-donations-jumped-700-in-the-last-20-years/252148/

 

Banks "frankly own the place," Sen. Dick Durbin famously said of Washington during the debate over financial regulation in 2010. And when it comes to total contributions for big donors, you can see what he's talking about (FIRE = the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector):

 

 

Most of the FIRE growth is coming from the securities and investment sector, followed by real estate, Lee Drutman writes at the Sunlight Foundation, elaborating here:

 

In 1990, 412 of the 1,091 elite donors from the finance industry came from the securities and investment industry, followed by 328 from real estate; by 2010, it was 2,178 from securities and investments, followed by 1,468 from real estate. In 1990, elite donors from securities and investments contributed $6.1 million and elite donors from real estate contributed $4.6 million. In 2010 elite donors from securities and investments contributed $84.0 million, while real estate donors contributed $44.5 million."

 

So, in a 20-year period when the financial sector's share of the economy expanded by a third, from 6% to 8.4% of GDP, donations from this particular group increased by 700%.

 

Before you go away thinking this graph explains everything you need to know about the way Congress works (and, by the way, that graph probably doesn't exist), keep in mind that elite donations are just a small part of how the richest Americans are more politically active than the rest of us. Via Yglesias:

 

For example, 41 percent of the very wealthy reported attending a political meeting. Only 9 percent of Americans did so in 2008. And 68 percent of the very wealthy reported giving money to a political candidate, party, or cause in the last four years. In 2008-a year in which "small donors" were numerous-only 13 percent of Americans donated to a political candidate or party. Again, there are small differences in the wording of the questions between the two surveys, but they are not likely responsible for the 55-point gap.

[Vent]

Wouldn't this have to be done through the Federal Reserve? I'm confused how it would work since i don't see it selling assets for the funding or being able to keep all the funds electronic. It certainly wouldn't use reserves for it? Can you explain?