Re: Campaign Finance Reform

[Jon Lasser <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>]

On Sun, 17 Dec 1995, jim bell wrote:

> >>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.

A tricky way around this, if it's done ALMOST properly, is to donate in 
odd amounts... ie "Senator Sludgepump, I am going to donate $469.23 to 
your campaign..."

All this means is that the donations would have to be lumped in some way 
so that Senator Sludgepump can't find out the exact amounts donated by 
any individual.

ObCrypto: Donating a specific amount of money could be considered a 
covert channel.
 
Jon
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Jon Lasser                <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>            (410)494-3072 
          Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/
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