Subject: Re: [EL] WaPo op-ed on transparency
From: Jon Roland
Date: 4/1/2011, 1:33 PM
To: Joseph Birkenstock
CC: "election-law@mailman.lls.edu" <election-law@mailman.lls.edu>
Reply-to:
"jon.roland@constitution.org"

But so does any spokesman for a block of voters, known or unknown to other voters. The solution is for voters to seek out and support only candidates who are reluctant to serve and indifferent to getting re-elected.

Political corruption begins with every voter who votes his pocketbook instead of for what's good for the country. There is little difference between the selling of his vote by an elected official and the selling of his vote by a voter, to whatever candidate promises him some benefit.
— Jon Roland, speech during his campaign for Congress, 1974


On 04/01/2011 03:14 PM, Joseph Birkenstock wrote:
To clarify: I don’t think the advertising itself is an undue influence on voters; I think the payment for the advertising – especially when a candidate/officeholder knows where it’s coming from and his or her constituents don’t – creates a means of exerting an undue influence over that candidate/officeholder.
-- Jon

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