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It may be an unpopular opinion on this blog, but I believe there's a big distinction between self-financed campaigns, which are often good, and corporately financed campaigns, which are almost always bad.

When we choose a physician, a lawyer, or a carpenter, we seek competence. We don't worry too much about whether anyone has the opportunity to enter one of those occupations. Political office should be the same way: we, the public, should seek to hire the most competent legislators. Equality of opportunity to run for office is not quite as vital a principle as it may first seem. The essential thing is getting the best.

There are quite a few political figures who have leveraged their personal fortunes into electoral success. And although some of them are almost comically unqualified -- think Ronald Lauder running for governor of New York -- a remarkable number of them are truly admirable politicians. I think of Senators Herb Kohl, Jay Rockefeller, and (previously Senator) Jon Corzine, as well as Michael Bloomberg of New York. They are idealistic and incorruptible, because they don't need the money that would corrupt them. And when we look at the history of rich people in politics, we have to think of FDR. There are also, of course, people like Ross Perot and Mitt Romney in that boat also, so self-financing is no guarantee of enlightment, but it does skew the odds in that direction.

Individual contributions are an interesting case. The idea of a candidate gaining office through many small contributions is appealing, but all too often individual contributions are a front for corporate interests, particularly when bundling is involved.

So the best solution might be to allow self-financed campaigns and publicly financed campaigns, but nothing else.

They are violationg treason, RICO, FARA, and non-profit laws. RICO and ban these war think tanks and foreign lobbies .

Unlimited campaign spending by one candidate is akin to your neighbor constantly bombarding you with excessively loud music at all hours of the night. Both are equivalent in its effectiveness in limiting effective free and equal speech!

Wiki this for starters. It's been around as long as I can remember. It's a no-brainer!


Only changes to this fund:


1. minimum SIGNATURES, not DOLLARS! This is the no-brainer part! It never has been and never shall be (on my watch anyway) "one dollar, one vote"!!


2. presidential AND congressional elections!


3. SOLE SOURCE OF CAMPAIGN FUNDS! Watch the media outlets trip over themselves going after a couple pennies rather than a couple hundred thousand $! Same principle as "single-payer healthcare", see: suddenly, like magic, appears a BUYER'S (us the taxpayers) market as it should be rather than a SELLER'S market (the candidate with the most money gets the ad).


Did I mention this was a no-brainer?

....we need a new Constitution that allows us to vote directly for President and Vice-President, and the power to directly recall all elected officials. The Supreme Court has to be an elected rather than an appointed position. Of course we need to bar all corporations for participating in elections in any way, shape, or form, which means no corporate manufactured or programmed voting machines, no corporate donations, and no corporate decisions regarding media coverage.

We need to abolish the Electoral College and bar the Supreme Court from intervening in elections. We do need publicly-funded elections and ranked-choice voting so that all candidates have an equal chance and no votes are wasted. We need to ban anyone with ties to political campaigns from being an election official or a Secretary of State. We need to get rid of our corrupt Justice Department and the corrupt judges and District Attorneys so that violations of election codes can be prosecuted and punished.

We need to get rid of gerrymandered districting. We need citizen oversight and total transparency of all aspects of election procedures -- no votes can be counted secretly behind locked doors or inside computers that can be undetectably hacked.

No person should be sworn into office before all votes are counted, audits and recounts have been performed if necessary, and the election has been certified -- by the citizens, not by elections officials who may have manipulated the hand-counted ballots to match the machine counts. Ballots must have a secure, citizen-controlled chain-of-custody at all times and never be left in the sold custody of elections officials.

Currently, the military-industrial complex selects the candidates by bankrolling their favorites and denying media coverage to those they disfavor, so all candidates with a chance of winning are pro-war. That, and the fact that we do not have free and fair elections, is why I no longer vote.

As long as people continue to vote for pre-selected candidates who are all pro-war, in sham elections where we can never know for sure if our votes were counted or were counted accurately, and where unelected candidates cannot be removed from office merely because evidence that they did not win is uncovered after they've been sworn in, we will continue to have a rogue, outlaw nation that has torture and crimes against humanity as national policy.

If we really want peace and the rule of law, we have to stop voting in sham elections and refuse to vote until we get free and fair elections.

There is no element of our system that is not deeply flawed, irreparably corrupted, or totally broken. It cannot be reformed -- we need a new system.

I believe corporate contributions to political campaigns at ANY level should be illegal and punishable by severe fines (up to the amount of the contribution, and perhaps more) AND imprisonment of the corporate officer who authorized the contribution. I believe that any candidate for elective office who accepts such contributions, or refuses to return them once their source is determined, should likewise be put on trial for corruption and, if found guilty, summarily imprisoned. I believe that corporate lobbying of politicians/officeholders should be criminalized amd punishable by severe fines. Corporate involvement in the American political/electoral process is NOT "Free Speech" - it is nothing less than Bribery, Soliciting to Commit Bribery, Conspiracy to Solicit/Commit Bribery, subverting our democratic system for purely selfish, nefarious, and malevolent purposes.
If Corporate America wants "free speech", they can buy it just like everybody else. Let them buy commercials, PSAs, full-page ads, and web-spam - NOT politicians!!

Both Senators Clinton and Obama have spent millions in the Primaries and caucuses, for a job that pays $400,000 per year. An obscnity! Something is wrong where "power" in a democracy is worth that much.

We have had seven plus years of an abuse of that power by the current administrtion, that has allowed large industry to control our government and to a great extent write its laws.

The CHANGE needed is public financing and a ban on private advertising for any candidate. If charitable organizatons can lose tax exemptons for taking political positions, then private industry shoudbe fined for doing the same. This is not a violation of the First Amendment, which refers to "free" speech - "paid" speech is not "free" speech.

I thought it unfair and biased that the last question was only asked about Senator McCain and not about Senators Clinton and Obama -- and I'm a registered Democrat! How about fair and unbiased from our side too, huh? We complain about the Republicans' tactics (rightfully so) and then we go and pull this crap? Not in my book.

McCain is a hypocrite, just like all the rest!

My thoughts on this are incompletely formed at this point, but I'm very impressed by the impact of the 2008 campaigns -- especially the Obama, Clinton and Paul campaigns -- in their ability to generate small contributions online. I think it's fair to ask whether this kind of financing might actually be more democratic than trying to rein in spending through public financing.

I'm hedging on this because it's always possible that we'll learn months or years from now that the usual corporate interests are somehow gaming the small contribution process. But for now, I'm cautiously tilting toward the idea that the Obama campaign's million-plus small donors already have rewritten the rules that clean election efforts like this have worked to rectify, far more than any top-down reform ever will.

Instant run-off voting and clean elections are the tools we should use when voting for our politicians.

I don't understand how anyone can talk about election reform without discussing some variation of 'instant-runoff-voting'... while you may feel it has nothing to do with financing, I just find it so important that I have decided to bring it up in every 'elections reform' conversation.
As a point of interest, if 'choice' is so important to Nader, why hasn't he been working for at least 4 years to get this type of change implemented?
It would not only be the fairest method, it could also be the beginnings of a third party system.

Thirty or so years ago one of my last college papers was about public financing for elections. Looking back, the problems were not so severe as they are today. Lobbyists weren't as numerous or greedy.
Advertisers, who are profiting mightily from the gross amounts of money
that has to be raised by campaigners, like this system just fine.
If we could get the two remaining campaigners for president to agree on
public funding from here on, it would start us to knock down the many
obstacles that will prevent public financing.
I'm not holding my breath.
IF WE THE PEOPLE DO NOT DO SOMETHING TO CURTAIL THIS
SYPHONING OR OUR CONSTITUTIONAL POWER, THE ONCE BEAUTIFUL USA WILL NOT SURVIVE.
After major elections, we forget all the things we needed to do to make things better for the next time, so I hope we’re going to continue with everything we have to make sure that the present problems are corrected.

While I think that "clean election" laws like the ones in Arizona and Maine are valuable, I also think that it's important to distinguish between large, bundled donations and small (>$200) donations. The first is how lobbyists and corporations game the system. The second is a way for ordinary people to support candidates they care about.

Your survey is behind the curve in this regard. Both Clinton and Obama have raised tremendous amounts of money from small donations, mostly on the net. If either of them choose to opt out of the old matching funds system, we should have no problem with it. It's the bundled $2300 donations that are the problem, and the $3 checkoff does nothing to deal with them.

David,

Thank you for all of the work that you have done on behalf of Clean Money, Clean Elections legislation over the years. The idea of a poll and a responsive chat is a fantastic, new, innovative and interactive way of bringing more voices into the process, and I commend you and the Public Campaign team for making it happen!

Our campaigns should be as full of idealism as our constitution. Accountability to our constitution should be enforced with all due process of law for all public officials. If they can't stand the heat they
should NOT go near the kitchen of government. [PERIOD]!

I agree with the first blogger. Additionally, this primary campaign candidates have raised and spent enough money to provide health care coverage for a good number of citizens; to feed a lot of hungry people; to provide homes for the homeless; and to apply to our deficit and pay back loans from Social Security. It is obscene. As witnessed in the 2 elections 4 and 8 years ago and in this one, some candidates wouldn't even need money to finance their campaign as our "free press" campaigns for them for free in the name of journalism and "news".
The more money you have, the more you can create whatever message and image you wish to sell to the American people. This is not how a democracy should work; none of the issues I have raised supports a democracy. Pitiful. It becomes less a campaign and more a public relations war.

CAMPAIGN ACCOUNTABILITY: Let us talk about how that WORKS for all of us. No political official should
ever receive their full pay or retirement benefits, etc., if they fail their platform; lie to the voting citizenry; receive any payoffs or bribes; accept
future employment from any special interest group;
or prove to have been a failure to the U.S.A. citizens
as an accountable "public servant". Our elected officials should SHINE with integrity and leadership skills. George W. Bush, could never have been re-elected based on these standards. In fact, he would have been tossed after his 1st term in Texas. Maybe he
wouldn't even qualify for TEXAS politics based on these standards.

NO Campaign money is the solution. HEAR me out.
Let TV ads pay for all debates and town hall meetings.
ELIMINATE all private ads. LET Candidates stand on their platform and their voting records. Let the
newspapers be 100% accountable for factual and 100%
responsible reporting. If any false slander occurs...
let the HAMMER of the LAW fall heavily upon the
finances of the slanderers[put them out of biz].

The BIG CHANGE should be for ultimate accountability to the CITIZENS ... by all political officials, in
regard to their platform promises. STOP the LIES.

It seems that the most fair way to use public financing would be for all candidates to agree on the rules before the campaigning starts. In Barack's case, he is getting lots of money from individuals and to give that up for lesser funds from public financing money would hinder his flexibility. So my answers to the survey reflected that idea. The current contribution limits of $2300 for the primary and a like sum for the general election are reasonable but I don't know who established those limits.
Part of the citizens would be opposed to using their tax dollars to finance the candidates' campaigns. So if thousands or millions of individuals financed a candidate's campaign then they wouldn't have grounds to complain.
I don't think lobbying itself is necessarily bad, it is the changing of money (bribes) that is wrong. Presumably lobbyists are well informed folks in their field so we can learn from them and better understand their problems and thus cast a more educated vote. But it should stop there.

In addition to receiving public financing, penalties need to be imposed on candidates who receive funds from outside the program or the benefit of advertising paid for by lobbyists, PACs or others outside the candidate's campaign organizations. The penalty should include automatic disqualification for the office sought by the candidate. Without such penalties, candidates and others will find ways to undermine the intent of the legislation.

The PURPOSE of public financing would be best served if Senator Obama continued to finance his general election campaign the same way he is financing his primary campaign.

Over a million individual Americans are supporting him because we believe in him. We're not lobbyists or corporations. We're not asking anything in return, except the kind of leadership we expect Obama to provide, based on his campaign and on his record.

The federal public financing system does not provide protection against big-money attacks, such as "swift boating" by Political Action Committees or grossly unfair reports by biased media outlets.

We support the concept of electing representatives who are accountable to the people, not to special interests. Obama's current campaign and current financing are living proof that it can be done.

I would like to present a petition to Senator Obama, signed by as many supporters as possible, stating that WE are public financing, and we want him to continue to accept our support in the general election.

Citizens need to call on their state legislatures to call for a constitutional convention as prescribed in Article V for among other things, the purpose of prescribing how elections shall be held from the nominating process, how they're financed and placing temporal restrictions on campaigns not to be declared before April 1 of the election year and active campaigning not begin before June 1.
In this way we can forgo the endless campaigning and fund raising, and if caucuses and primaries remain the mean to nomination, it will be done in short order.

How often are we totally surprised by an act of Congress that seems to take us in a completely wrong direction. Examples are the various Energy Acts of recent years. We should not be surprised, however, when we look at the millions of dollars donated to various candidates by the oil and gas industry.
We must sever this connection between big business and candidates and return to the intention of our founding fathers - that our representatives would serve the interests and the intentions of their electorate.
Gotta go. More ranting later!

I am all for public funding of political campaigns. It won't be until we get the big corporate lobbyist money out of Washington that we will be able to take our elections and our government back.

As it is, our elections process is for sale to the highest bidder insuring that only the wealthy and their agendas get to run our government, abuse us and reconfigure America to suit their multinational interests. We aren't here for that. Americans should not be made to pay for the schemes and dreams of the Neo-fascists in both parties like Silverado/Broward/Iraq/the National Treasury/NAFTA/CAFTA/WTO/DLC/PNAC... etc.

The dollar figure I have heard is ten dollars per person to achieve free, fair, and public campaign financing. (Free as in free from K Street.) I'd be willing to put up one hundred dollars a year just to get big money interests out of our elections process. Big money only lets the criminals in and that does nothing for the working man and woman.

I also agree that we need to have a simple recall system. WAY too many politicians and candidates feel that lying to the American public is just "doing business" as a way to get into office. WRONG!!!!! I don't want a bunch of liars running the government. If they say they are Democrats, then I don't want them turning around and governing like a laissez-faire Republican. This BS has got to stop! We need a fast-track recall system and oversight on this point.

Why not have all primaries on the same day, preceeded by a set number of debates which would be aired by all major networks, on a rotating basis, over several days? This would eliminate the need for candidates to have to raise money and obligate themselves to the donors.
Realizing that political parties are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution and have only grown out of a need for interest groups to control the government, political parties and how they conduct their operations are beyond the scope of control by the government. Or, should be so.
Therefore, the primaries, by mutual consent of the political parties, should be regulated by rules drawn up by the government (people) for the for the mutual benefit of the voters.
This probably goes back to my premise that primary elections should be held on the same day, nationwide, preceeded by a series of public debates.
The obscene amounts of money spent on the primaries and the general election benefit, first, the media (both news media and advertising media) and, secondly, the hospitality industry which benefits from all the travel related expenses.
Lets terminate all this prolonged election circus and have a meaningful election process.

The broadcasters should have to give a certain amount of prime-time airtime to candidates at all levels gratis.
As payment for their monopolization of public airwaves that i could find a much better use for in my sleep.

The Green Party U.S.
platform states:
"I.A.3. All viable candidates at the state and federal levels should have free and equal radio and television time and print press coverage."

the RF airspace being a public domain that broadcasters monopolize almost for free, usable participation in the process of selecting our governance is a pittance to ask in return, and it should be demanded now.

I'm extremely pleased to see that this issue is being brought up. I've felt for some time that too much money is being used for campaigning in our country. I feel that we need some serious campaign reform, and this petitions addresses one of them. In addition, I would like to see controls exerted upon the length of time that campaigning is done. Right now, I'm tired of all of the candidates. For me, all of the candidates have been around too long, and they are all losing their appeal. I'm also concerned that the three people now running in the coming election are senators and they are being paid by us to serve the country in that role. They have all missed many important issues while they have been on the campaign trail. I don't enjoy turning a blind eye to this issue just because they decided to run for a higher office. I think that the means for choosing the candidates should be uniform throughout the country when it's a national election, and of course, I'm a strong supporter of direct vote of the people. A unified system for counting the votes to avoid election fraud is a paramount need.

In addition to enacting public campaign financing for all public office, two further safeguards must be put in place. 1) Term limits and 2) A simplified and fair method of recall if the successful candidate doesn't perform.

The founders of our republic considered public office no different than service in the militia. Citizens were expected to perform their duties for a fixed period in the best interest of the nation. Multiple terms and even lifetimes in office were not envisioned and certainly would have been considered undesirable.