4 ms·

In this theoretical democracy with publicly funded elections would I, a completely independent citizen be able to buy ads in support of my desired candidate? Ho

In this theoretical democracy with publicly funded elections would I, a completely independent citizen be able to buy ads in support of my desired candidate? How about making lawn signs to campaign? Or even just going door to door for him or her? All of the above is a gift of either my time or my money. Should all of that be banned? It's the problem people face when opposing Citizen's United. Money is inherently connected to speech.

rayiner 9y ago
No you wouldn’t be able to. Campaign finance contributions can be circumvented if political expression is not banned, making such political expression a perpetual target: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-myth-of-campaign-finance-reform https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-myth... > But in the course of the argument, Justice Samuel Alito interrupted Stewart and inquired: "What's your answer to [the] point that there isn't any constitutional difference between the distribution of this movie on video [on] demand and providing access on the internet, providing DVDs, either through a commercial service or maybe in a public library, [or] providing the same thing in a book? Would the Constitution permit the restriction of all of those as well?" Stewart, an experienced litigator who had represented the government in campaign-finance cases at the Supreme Court before, responded that the provisions of McCain-Feingold could in fact be constitutionally applied to limit all those forms of speech. The law, he contended, would even require banning a book that made the same points as the Citizens United video. > There was an audible gasp in the courtroom. Then Justice Alito spoke, it seemed, for the entire audience: "That's pretty incredible."
- smaddox 9y ago
  Very interesting read. Thank you for linking it. It has significantly altered my perception of the Citizens United issue. I see now that there's no simple way to balance campaign finance reform against freedom of speech. Edit: Perhaps instead of focusing on campaign finance reform, we should focus on polling reform, and expanding the house? If we used a better polling system, e.g. candidate ranking, and increased the number of representatives, then it would be much more costly to buy a majority.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    Big money will remain in politics as long as there is big money in politics. That is, USA federal government spends many billions of dollars every day. Lots of people have noticed, and invested accordingly in political influence. The only way to change this is to spend much less. One option for that would be to break up the union into many smaller units who would levy taxes and spend money independently. It wouldn't be such a prize to serve as e.g. chairman of the senate finance committee in such a government, so there would be far less money involved in elections for that position.
chefandy 9y ago
Money might be connected to speech, but that doesn't make it an moral equivalent or practically inseparable. Time is a significantly more egalitarian resource than money. Without their money to leverage other people's time, a rich person has the same 24 hours in their day as a poor person. Sure, a poor person might be working two jobs, have to do all of their own shopping, cleaning, child caring, and elder caring, but a rich person doesn't have thousands, millions, or billions more hours than they need every day to satisfy their basic needs. I don't think it's controversial to say that if you equate money to speech in the political process, then rich people (and non-people entities) will always have more speech. By my reckoning, such a system favors creating laws which favor the existing rich, which gives them even more speech to protect and entrench themselves. If I was designing a societal feedback loop to create an oligarchy, it would look like that. If you look at American post-war anti-socialist propaganda from sources like the National Education Program, a large part of their assertion that American capitalism is morally just is our system's wide distribution of wealth. The situation has changed significantly since then. I believe equating money to political speech will accelerate that change. Fortunately we have a really great way for people to directly express their opinion about who should be elected: a vote.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  But rich people can buy others' time. Pay-for-play aside, that's arguably that's what lobbying is in the first place. You pay other people to research, write position papers, have meetings, and persuade for you.

rayiner 9y ago

No you wouldn’t be able to. Campaign finance contributions can be circumvented if political expression is not banned, making such political expression a perpetual target: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-myth-of-campaign-finance-reform https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-myth... > But in the course of the argument, Justice Samuel Alito interrupted Stewart and inquired: "What's your answer to [the] point that there isn't any constitutional difference between the distribution of this movie on video [on] demand and providing access on the internet, providing DVDs, either through a commercial service or maybe in a public library, [or] providing the same thing in a book? Would the Constitution permit the restriction of all of those as well?" Stewart, an experienced litigator who had represented the government in campaign-finance cases at the Supreme Court before, responded that the provisions of McCain-Feingold could in fact be constitutionally applied to limit all those forms of speech. The law, he contended, would even require banning a book that made the same points as the Citizens United video. > There was an audible gasp in the courtroom. Then Justice Alito spoke, it seemed, for the entire audience: "That's pretty incredible."

smaddox 9y ago
Very interesting read. Thank you for linking it. It has significantly altered my perception of the Citizens United issue. I see now that there's no simple way to balance campaign finance reform against freedom of speech. Edit: Perhaps instead of focusing on campaign finance reform, we should focus on polling reform, and expanding the house? If we used a better polling system, e.g. candidate ranking, and increased the number of representatives, then it would be much more costly to buy a majority.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Big money will remain in politics as long as there is big money in politics. That is, USA federal government spends many billions of dollars every day. Lots of people have noticed, and invested accordingly in political influence. The only way to change this is to spend much less. One option for that would be to break up the union into many smaller units who would levy taxes and spend money independently. It wouldn't be such a prize to serve as e.g. chairman of the senate finance committee in such a government, so there would be far less money involved in elections for that position.

chefandy 9y ago

Money might be connected to speech, but that doesn't make it an moral equivalent or practically inseparable. Time is a significantly more egalitarian resource than money. Without their money to leverage other people's time, a rich person has the same 24 hours in their day as a poor person. Sure, a poor person might be working two jobs, have to do all of their own shopping, cleaning, child caring, and elder caring, but a rich person doesn't have thousands, millions, or billions more hours than they need every day to satisfy their basic needs. I don't think it's controversial to say that if you equate money to speech in the political process, then rich people (and non-people entities) will always have more speech. By my reckoning, such a system favors creating laws which favor the existing rich, which gives them even more speech to protect and entrench themselves. If I was designing a societal feedback loop to create an oligarchy, it would look like that. If you look at American post-war anti-socialist propaganda from sources like the National Education Program, a large part of their assertion that American capitalism is morally just is our system's wide distribution of wealth. The situation has changed significantly since then. I believe equating money to political speech will accelerate that change. Fortunately we have a really great way for people to directly express their opinion about who should be elected: a vote.

humanrebar 9y ago
But rich people can buy others' time. Pay-for-play aside, that's arguably that's what lobbying is in the first place. You pay other people to research, write position papers, have meetings, and persuade for you.