Re: Campaign Finance Reform

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 07:43 PM 12/17/95 PST, you wrote:
>On December 17th you wrote:
>
>>To: cypherpunks@toad.com
>>From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
>>Subject: Political Cleanup program
>>
>>Politics is traditionally corrupt, it appears, because donors to politicians
>>and political campaigns expect a quid pro quo for their donations.  Various
>>unsatisfactory solutions include campaign spending limits, etc.
>>
>>It occurs to me that it would be a major advance if a system could be set up
>>that would "blind" campaign donations as to their source:  The donor could
>>be satisfied that his donation gets to the candidate or cause, but the
>>candidate couldn't know  who actually paid the money (and the donor would be
>>unable to prove that he made a donation, for example).  Admittedly there are
>>a lot of details that need to be worked out, but if this could be
>>accomplished it would change politics as we know it.
>
>If you'll give it some more thought, Jim, you'll see that it has a loophole
>in it you could drive a semi through. There is no way to keep a donor from
>passing the word to the recipient. No matter how you work out the details,
>it's impossible to keep the information from passing. It could never work.

It is absolutely true that you couldn't stop a person from communicating
claims of a donation to a politician.   But what you COULD do is to ensure
that the donor couldn't PROVE that he made such a donation.  In other words,
_I_ could claim that I gave $1K to Senator Sludgepump (a lie) and the good
senator would have no idea that I wasn't telling the truth.  The people who
REALLY made such donations would be helpless.


>Consider a more radical, and possibly workable, solution to the thorny issue
>of campaign finance. If we go back to the root of the problem, it seems
>clear that it is the high cost of a campaign. If a typical campaign were to
>cost a tenth or a twentieth of what it presently costs, we'd have gone a
>long way towards ameliorating the situation. How to do it? Simply ban all
>paid political spot ads - TV, radio, newspaper - all of them. Write it so
>that there's damned little wiggle room - a candidate can use lawn signs, but
>not billboards. They can use personal appearances, but not commercials.
>They can spend all the gas money they want running around their state or
>district, but not a dime for media spots.
>

Well, I have an even better and cheaper solution to the problem of
government and politics.  At an average of $20,000 per Congressman, we could
clean up Washington for $10 million dollars.