Talk:Campaign Finance

Spending on campaigns does prevent most any person from running for prominent office on their own dime. Instead, they must solicit the financial contributions of a broad range of individuals if they wish to push and shape their own message in the public eye. Pete proposes to put a limit on how much a candidate may spend in an election. This position seems reasonable on its own merits. How can Pete square this with the obvious (and contrary) intent of the 1st amendment in the Bill of Rights? Money can buy a lot of handbills, for example, which have always been considered speech. Isn't political speech the main thing the Founders wanted to protect? How can we limit campaign spending without limiting political speech? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bar33byu (talk • contribs). 19:13, 30 September 2005 (MST)

I don't necessarily agree that money = speech in all cases. Our laws should give equal protection and in a reverse sense should give us all equal power in the political process. Currently, money overrides that. If we are ever going to see true representation of the constituency in this republic, there needs to be a way to equalize the political process so anyone can participate. Limiting spending is the only way I see to do that. Without limiting spending, our current system will be retained, and moneyed interests will have "more" free speech than the rest of us.--pashdown 00:55, October 2, 2005 (MDT)

When laws can only be understood and interpreted by a select class of specially trained people, what good are the laws? I know there have been Supreme Court ruling which have upheld campaign finance laws. Nevertheless, it remains a mystery to me how this is done given the plain language of our Founding Document. --Bar33byu 20:13, 30 September 2005 (MDT)

The Supreme Court defers to Congressional lawmaking a lot. As in the "yelling 'fire' in a theater" example states, speech is not always considered "free". I don't think the Founders wanted us to be literalists. If anything they wanted the constitution to empower the people over the government.--pashdown 00:55, October 2, 2005 (MDT)

I worry that spending limits won't do what we want them to do, which is to prevent wealthy and powerful interests from monopolizing the political dialog. It's a secondary control, and is likely to have unintended consequences. It's also easily circumvented as previous attempts to limit spending have demonstrated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 155.101.189.44 (talk • contribs). 11:12, 3 October 2005 (MST)

You are right, it should only be advocated as a secondary control to public financing.--pashdown 20:54, October 3, 2005 (MDT)

As cool as the idea is that we should have a perfect level playing field, it is unrealistic. Our constitution would not allow us to limit the secondary "help" that PAC's give in endorsements and 3rd party campaign ads. I would like better spending management, but I'm uncertain how to accomplish that in a way that our courts would uphold. Tha shouldn't stop us from trying. --James Humphreys 21:14, 21 November 2005 (MST)

Vermont have all recently passed Public Financing Laws which limit spending on state campaigns and provide public funding for candidates. These laws have been successfully implemented

Saying Vermont's laws are successfully implemented is wrong. Vermont's campaign finance law is in the courts. It limits state house campaign to $2000. It is no where near enough to fund a state house campaign. The public financing laws benefit parties which broad-based support that can already raise substantial amounts of money, while the maximum donation of $300 severely hurts minor party challengers, and the overall cap of $300,000 for governor has only resulted in one race with the Progressive Party candidate received 9% of the vote, while the major party candidates spent over $600k. Vemont's campaign finance law is being looked at by the US Supreme Court this session -- if the SCOTUS up holds it then the Libertarian Party in Vermont will not be able to repeat our current fund raising success so that our candidates can focus on meeting voters instead of raising money. --(Hardy, Vermont LP Chair, 03 December 2005)

Look, you start strong but you end this miserably. Essentially your solution to campaign financing is that voters should elect people who document where the money comes from. Pete, that's not a solution for the real world, nor is it a strong, defendable position. Remember we need to not only be better thinkers than the other side but also better implementers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 166.70.39.76 (talk • contribs). 16:55, 6 December 2005 (MST)

Elimination

Just get rid of campaign finance laws. Bribary has always been against the law. Look at the election of 1896 as a goog example. To run for office you could accutally run and not have to fundraise. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.86.37.72 (talk • contribs). 14:53, 15 December 2005 (MST)