Pay for elections?

The most serious question facing the United States today is, "how do we finance elections?" This issue must be addressed before we can expect our government to act in our best interests with respect to the economy, terrorism, foreign policy or anything else. There is a growing perception that our elected officials are more interested in promoting and enriching themselves than in the nation's needs and its future. As in everything else in American politics, there is no simple answer.

The current system is that candidates for public office can accept contributions from just about anyone. The only restrictions in Nevada are a $5000 limit on the amount of a contribution, no contributions are allowed to be anonymous (if more than $100) or in the name of another person. Candidates are required to make regular reports that include each campaign contribution in excess of $100. Candidates for the federal House and Senate have similar restrictions.

That's pretty much it. A public officeholder knows who provided the money that paid for his campaign. The sop to the public is that the information is a public record. However, the main effect is that the list of donors motivates the officeholder to be an "honest politician".

The issue here is that the officeholder's constituency becomes the people who paid for the campaign rather than the public or even the people who voted for him. It's been suggested that there are really two elections. The first election is held in the odd numbered years and consists of potential candidates gathering votes in the form of dollars. A candidate that doesn't get enough of these "votes" is not likely to proceed to the second election.

The second election, held in even numbered years, is when the public gets to vote on the candidates that survived the first election. Note that candidates the public sees have already been vetted by the contributors. Other candidates rarely make it as far as the ballot.

Public officeholders loyalty must be transferred from the money people to the voters. There are several ways this might be accomplished, though all such systems will have their faults. Also, classic conservatives and the current system will resist any change, making the process an uphill battle. The final resolution will be the result of the inevitable compromises that must occur in the process of implementing campaign finance reform. However, we need to start at some time and at some place. This is the time and this is the place.

One approach is to have the election campaigns funded by the taxpayers and forbid any private contributions. This has some first amendment concerns and does not address the possibility of multiple allegedly independent election committees.

Another approach is to insist that all campaign contributions be anonymous. Even (and especially) the candidate doesn't know where the money came from. Thus the candidate will be focused on the voters rather than the money. In this system, contributors might well announce that they gave $$$ to a particular candidate. So could anyone else whether in fact they did or did not. The main issue here is the potential lack of integrity in the cutout organization that received the money and stripped it of identity before passing it on to the candidate.

Again, there are no simple answers.