College of Political Knowledge

Election Series

Yet another thought provoking exchange with a loyal reader, Quin or Quintessential Havoc (blogroll will take you this insightful blog) (yes, I know I refer to Qunin often and the reason is he has the brilliant insight of being one of my most loyal readers and on top of that he has some insightful opinions….we may not always agree but at least we can have a dialog)…..we were talking about things that could be done to make the election process more legal and open…….one of the common things was that some sort of campaign reform is needed….Quin is from the UK and their system seems to be a bit more open than ours….

Campaign reform always comes up and I have my ideas like public financing, open primaries and so on….and as I was researching this I came upon these reforms on Squidoo.com and being essentially a lazy person I thounght I would post them in this piece……

• Make all campaign donations anonymous. Pool all donations into a public general election fund. This fund would supply campaign funds for candidates running for ALL offices – from local through national positions. The amount of money a candidate receives would be based upon the office they were running for.
• Accounting for the general fund and each campaign’s individual funds would be updated DAILY – not once a quarter as is currently done – and posted to the internet so that any citizen can log in and look at how their money is being spent.
• All private donations to individual candidates would be outlawed. No donations from individuals, corporations, special interests, political action committees, non-profits, etc. No private donations of ANY KIND.
• All candidates would receive FREE AIRTIME on both radio and television. They would receive comparable time slots to their opponents and all candidates would receive the same amount of time.
• There should be no filing fees to run for office. Instead of current requirements and fees, candidates would be required to submit a resume or curriculum vitae detailing their educational and work background, an essay outlining their stands on the issues, a statement of their intent – why they are running for office, and a detailed account of all affiliations with organizations – corporations, political, social, non-profit, board of directors, etc.

• Debates should be held more frequently than they currently are. They should run for a minimum of 8 weeks prior to the election. All candidates should be allowed to participate – regardless of party affiliation. They should be broadcast live on radio, television, and the internet. After the debate has ended, full video should be posted on the internet to allow those who were not able to watch to see it at a later time in its entirety.
• Finally, a voter’s guide should be published by local governments and sent to EVERY registered voter at least 8 weeks prior to the election. This guide should be put together in an easily understandable format and will include information on local through national candidates for office. It should include all information obtained by the candidate at the time they filed to run for office along with a detailed voting record for all incumbents.

All in all, I will agree with most points of these reforms….I think that if we are to truly have a government of the people then we need reform and need it NOW!  None of these reforms are difficult to accomplish except for the money part….millionaires do NOT want to give up their “seed” money……this is needed….when a candidate spends 104 million dollars to get a $500,000 a year job, then something is seriously wrong with the system we have.

I might add that ALL elected officials should be held to a mandatory 65 retirement age…that way we keep incompetent old farts from imposing their BS on the rest of the country.