Forum Post: Campaign Finance ERADICATION

Campaign finance REFORM will probably never live up to our satisfaction. What we need, in my opinion, is Campaign Finance ERADICATION. What I mean by this is this: What if we tried to remove financing from elections altogether? Make a law: No public, private or personal finances can help promote one candidate over another. The goal: Limit corporate influence via lobbyists and allow anyone to run for office regardless of socioeconomic status, education, occupation, race, gender, religion or lack of religion.

There would have to be certain qualifications one would need to meet in order to qualify. This would limit the number of people who run for election, but I assume that there would still be a substantial amount of candidates. However, this number ceases to be a problem if the stance that each person takes can be clearly illustrated and available to everyone. Computer programs can easily sort candidates by criteria. Let's say for example we only want a pro-life candidate. If all candidates were required to answer yes, no or maybe, then you simply put a check mark next to that criteria. The more you select, the more that are filtered out, and you would end up only looking at the candidates that match closest to your ideals. Each candidate could sign up for a free page linked to this proposed publically funded site (like signing up for a free email address) and would get a certain amount of space to explain why they answered the way they did. This idea could be improved and expanded upon, but you get the idea. What is also cool about this idea, is it gives us a more concrete way of holding our candidates accountable to what they say.

The end result is clear, we don't want money/power corrupting our democratic process and making it unfair by giving certain candidates more publicity than others. However, we can't restrict the media from doing whatever their wealthy owners want them to do because of freedom of speech. We also can't prevent powerful unions from threatening their employees and forcing them to get out on the street and hold signs for certain candidates. This would all require a limitation to the freedom of speech (and we don't want to start taking away rights from anyone). I am open to ideas or suggestions. But I have some ideas that can help somewhat: Make a law that says that it is illegal for a person in a position of power within any corporation or union to instruct, put pressure upon or suggest how their constituents should vote. Also, since we can't restrict media tycoons from controlling what we see, we need to somehow increase their competition. We need some media (on TV) that balances what they say, so the American Public isn't being spoon-fed what the 1% want us to do.

Also, another, semi-related topic. No more career politicians! Limits for terms, and limits on # of years someone can be in public office, period! I don't care how qualified someone is or how much experience they have, after a certain amount of time, they will spoil. We need constant cycling of new blood. There also has to be put into place some checks and balances which prevent conflicts of interest. For example, someone who comes from a business that is regulated by the FDA shouldn't be elected into a position within the FDA (regardless of whether they personally still hold stock in the company or not). There are still loopholes to these ideas, but that's why I would like to meet with someone else who is interested in this topic, to try to iron out those details. If you are interested, email me: recoveryjunkie83@gmail.com.