Cool, coming back at ya: (and the other sister comments suggesting campaign finance funding & limits)
The problem with publicly funded elections is that it gives the two major parties another way to lock-out independent/3rd-party candidates. There's usually some limit on who gets campaign money based off of past performance-- and if there wasn't a limit on who gets campaign money, then people would figure out how to run for Senate, and then spend their government-granted 10mil buying ads on their friend's podcast network.
It also runs into problems with free speech & Citizens United. Michael Moore tends to get noisy every election-- and in the most recent election he was able to explicitly say: "I prefer Clinton". In previous elections, before Citizens United, he would focus on political footballs that are highly partisan, so that his support for an issue was an easy proxy for support for a candidate, but it did not violate campaign finance laws. But it did violate the spirit of the campaign finance laws at the time, since he was raising money for a film that supported a candidate by proxy? But we should also be okay with that b/c free speech? You get yourself tangled real fast.
As with all major decisions there are many compromises to be made. When our representatives spend hours every day raising money throughout their political career I think we have clearly made the wrong ones.
> The problem with publicly funded elections is that it gives the two major parties another way to lock-out independent/3rd-party candidates. There's usually some limit on who gets campaign money based off of past performance
This is already a major barrier because the federal government provides tens of millions of dollars in funding to political parties whose presidential candidate gets a certain minimum percent of the popular vote (I don't remember if it is 5% or 15%). This publicly funded party infrastructure is what makes raising millions of dollars for a campaign possible by centralizing critical information like constituent data and donor lists. As far as independent/3rd party candidates themselves, publicly funded elections actually help them because it puts a hard limit on how much other candidates can use their financial advantage. It's a lot easier to compete using a volunteer ground campaign when your opponents aren't dumping millions into TV and radio ads as fast as they can raise it.
> and if there wasn't a limit on who gets campaign money, then people would figure out how to run for Senate, and then spend their government-granted 10mil buying ads on their friend's podcast network.
This happens all the time and there are already laws against it in many cases because its campaign finance fraud. It doesn't matter whether it's the tax payer or private donors. Publicly funded elections are worth the cost to the taxpayer of a few cases of fraud if it leads to better governance (which would lead to better protections against this kind of fraud).
> It also runs into problems with free speech & Citizens United.
That's not a valid criticism of publicly funded elections as a solution, only specific implementations and their feasibility. If federal publicly funded elections were implemented as a Constitutional amendment it would override the first amendment in a variety of ways depending on how it was worded. At that point any relevant precedent would be open to review at every level of the judiciary until the Supreme Court makes further decisions interpreting the new amendment's effect on precedent.
Comments
Cool, coming back at ya: (and the other sister comments suggesting campaign finance funding & limits)
The problem with publicly funded elections is that it gives the two major parties another way to lock-out independent/3rd-party candidates. There's usually some limit on who gets campaign money based off of past performance-- and if there wasn't a limit on who gets campaign money, then people would figure out how to run for Senate, and then spend their government-granted 10mil buying ads on their friend's podcast network.
It also runs into problems with free speech & Citizens United. Michael Moore tends to get noisy every election-- and in the most recent election he was able to explicitly say: "I prefer Clinton". In previous elections, before Citizens United, he would focus on political footballs that are highly partisan, so that his support for an issue was an easy proxy for support for a candidate, but it did not violate campaign finance laws. But it did violate the spirit of the campaign finance laws at the time, since he was raising money for a film that supported a candidate by proxy? But we should also be okay with that b/c free speech? You get yourself tangled real fast.
Secondary and tertiary side-effects. :-/
As with all major decisions there are many compromises to be made. When our representatives spend hours every day raising money throughout their political career I think we have clearly made the wrong ones.
> The problem with publicly funded elections is that it gives the two major parties another way to lock-out independent/3rd-party candidates. There's usually some limit on who gets campaign money based off of past performance
This is already a major barrier because the federal government provides tens of millions of dollars in funding to political parties whose presidential candidate gets a certain minimum percent of the popular vote (I don't remember if it is 5% or 15%). This publicly funded party infrastructure is what makes raising millions of dollars for a campaign possible by centralizing critical information like constituent data and donor lists. As far as independent/3rd party candidates themselves, publicly funded elections actually help them because it puts a hard limit on how much other candidates can use their financial advantage. It's a lot easier to compete using a volunteer ground campaign when your opponents aren't dumping millions into TV and radio ads as fast as they can raise it.
> and if there wasn't a limit on who gets campaign money, then people would figure out how to run for Senate, and then spend their government-granted 10mil buying ads on their friend's podcast network.
This happens all the time and there are already laws against it in many cases because its campaign finance fraud. It doesn't matter whether it's the tax payer or private donors. Publicly funded elections are worth the cost to the taxpayer of a few cases of fraud if it leads to better governance (which would lead to better protections against this kind of fraud).
> It also runs into problems with free speech & Citizens United.
That's not a valid criticism of publicly funded elections as a solution, only specific implementations and their feasibility. If federal publicly funded elections were implemented as a Constitutional amendment it would override the first amendment in a variety of ways depending on how it was worded. At that point any relevant precedent would be open to review at every level of the judiciary until the Supreme Court makes further decisions interpreting the new amendment's effect on precedent.