Public Campaign Action Fund - Small Donor Distortion - Comments

Thank you all for posting

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:15:11 +0000

Thank you all for posting your comments here -- it is great to see debate on this issue.

Anti allergic

Sun, 31 May 2009 23:09:55 +0000

Hey. Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn?t hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor. I am from Timor and too poorly know English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Microbial, anti allergic and well being promoting properties of natural rooibos anti allergic." Thanks for the help :-D, Hilton.

Thank you

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:29:27 +0000

Thank you for the clarification. I obviously need to find out more, because it sounds like this is a much better program than the sort of public financing that would allow Lyndon Larouce to have access to the public trough...

Accountability

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 17:54:34 +0000

Actually, public financing in the Clean Elections model requires candidates who wish to receive public funds (the program is voluntary) to collect small-dollar qualifying contributions from supporters (usually $5; though sometimes more); so if you want to financially support a candidate you're given the opportunity to do so. As to your question about promoting accountability, it comes in the form of your vote, not your money. A legislator seeking re-election as a Clean Elections candidate has to collect those qualifying contributions, and has to talk to a lot of voters to do it. If voters aren't happy with his or her job performance, they'll withhold their support. When mounting a viable campaign is dependent on securing public support -- not just financial backing -- it promotes accountability to voters. As a voter, I'm certainly more likely to engage in the electoral and political process if I feel my representatives are accountable to me, and that my participation has a tangible effect.

Would public financing increase participation

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:35:01 +0000

“Mr. Weigel would do well to take a larger view of what public financing could mean for broader, and idealogically richer, civic participation in this country.“

I am not clear how public financing would lear to a "broader, and ideologically richer, civic participation". If anything, if all campaigns were 100% publicly funded, I think it would stifle civic participation by disallowing me the opportunity to support the candidate of my choice, in favor of supporting every candidate financially, regardless of his/her appeal to me. In short, because I don't have the time at this point in my life to physically stump for a particular candidate, I would have less incentive to participate in the political process than I do now. Because I tend to vote for independents and small-party candidates who do not show up on the political radar of the two major parties and who would thus stand little chance of significant public financing, it would actually serve to stifle my civic participation and commitment to the system.

One could argue that I should participate directly in the civic process without money, but my $25 contribution is a much more efficient way of contributing than going out and volunteering my limited time: any campaign would ignore my efforts because I could donate less time than it would take them to train me. The arguments for public financing could even be taken to an absurd extreme to demand that the government provide neutral persons who would serve as activists so that candidates would not be beholden to any real activists who have donated more time than others. There will always be inequality of some sort in this process, but that is not a bad thing, as someone with good ideas deserves to be better rewarded than a loonbat.

My response will no doubt be dismissed as a free market-response that fails to see the corrupting influence of money, but just because the government doles out the money doesn't change that corruption. All it does is remove any sense that the candidate has anything that she/he owes me or anyone, except for the government that funded the campaign (somehow I doubt that they would feel more compelled to listen to me because their funding came from "the American people". In other words, the same sense of beholdeness that is decried would still apply, but we would get candidates that were in favor of more government because their patronage comes from the government rather than from individuals.

Small Donor Distortion

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:09:16 +0000

This article, from David Weigel at Reason Magazine, claims the rise of the small-dollar donor eliminates the need for public financing. He trots out the beaten horse of Howard Dean's presidential campaign as proof that the internet provides an effective counterbalance to any iniquity inherent to privately financed elections. While the internet is a valuable tool for enhancing participation in politics, Weigel is kidding himself if he thinks it has corrected the imbalance big-money fundraising creates.