Public financing of election campaigns is a bad idea, and
unconstitutional, for much the same reason establishing churches is a
bad idea, and unconstitutional. It unfairly favors some over others and
creates a dependency on the public purse that is bad for government,
bad for religion, and bad for the electoral process. We need to erect a
wall of separation between campaign and state.
Any proposal that is simple, easy, direct, and obvious, won't work and
will probably make things worse.
If you want to get voters to demand political information, restrict the
supply. However, this can only be done, constitutionally, for current
officeholders, who may be forbidden from raising or spending money for
anything but websites or travel to public events, and forbidden from
issuing broadcast messages to voters. It would, of course, be
unconstitutional to forbid that of challengers who don't hold current
office, but if the only way people could find out about incumbents was
to visit their websites or attend speaking events, then they might do
that more, and develop a habit of doing it for challengers as well.
Or of course, we could have the world economy collapse and thus
encourage voters to take elections more seriously.
-- Jon
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Constitution Society http://constitution.org
2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322 Austin, TX 78757
512/299-5001 jon.roland@constitution.org
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