Does America Need a Third Political Party?

Why is lowering the bar a problem? That way you remedy your point (a) against.

Strict laws for spending the money appropiately (and monitoring and enforcing it) would solve problem (b).

Nothing inherently unfixable.

Drawing the line would be pretty tricky. Lower the bar enough to truly open the gate to more voices and the taxpayers might have pay for the American Nudist Party to campaign. There aren't nearly enough attractive women in that party to make it worth the money...

Actually it is ironic, that?

I agree setting the bar appropriately is the trick. One idea would be to start with getting enough petition signatures, and have a graduated scale based on number of signatures, with regular funding cycles adjusted by number of signatures. That's a lot of petitions, but I'd rather they and their supporters spend there time talking to people at supermarkets rather than whoring themselves to big business interests.

But if you talk about petition signatures necessary to run you would still pretty much leave the power in the hands of the two parties, again.


You'd just get local party bosses taking over - again - and mobilizing people to basically force people to sign petitions at gunpoint.

Hmm, you think so? Not so sure about that... But at least you'd get the big money out of campaign financing and its attendant corruption.

dteowner said:

Drawing the line would be pretty tricky. Lower the bar enough to truly open the gate to more voices and the taxpayers might have pay for the American Nudist Party to campaign. There aren't nearly enough attractive women in that party to make it worth the money…

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Dte, STOP giving Palin and Clinton ideas. Some of us like to sleep nights!!!!

Thrasher said:

Why is lowering the bar a problem? That way you remedy your point (a) against.

Strict laws for spending the money appropiately (and monitoring and enforcing it) would solve problem (b).

Nothing inherently unfixable.

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Because it will attract all kinds of bozos who only want the public money and arent all that serious about actually campaigning. Campaign money will be diverted to other uses. Humans and parties are very creative about that kind of thing. Using a sizable chunk of the money to hire family and friends as "campaign staff", buying crap overpriced ads from a TV station owned by your associates, the possibilities are virtually endless. Our system with a mixture of (previous performance based) public party funding and private contributions already sees these problems, but a system relying exclusively on public funding would be far worse. I'd rather see public assistance limited to physical, hard to embezzle measures such as distribution of ballots (maybe having a very low bar based on votes in previous elections since that is the "least bad" measure I can think of).

The police apparatus required to effectively monitor this is impractical and undesirable in a free society. And since I prefer no law to unenforcable laws I'd rather scrap the idea.

Thrasher said:

I agree setting the bar appropriately is the trick. One idea would be to start with getting enough petition signatures, and have a graduated scale based on number of signatures, with regular funding cycles adjusted by number of signatures. That's a lot of petitions, but I'd rather they and their supporters spend there time talking to people at supermarkets rather than whoring themselves to big business interests.

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Requiring a certain number of signatures for effective political participation is a problematic solution for other reasons as well. Forged signatures, accusations of forged signatures (to block your opponents), etc...

Thrasher said:

Not so sure about that… But at least you'd get the big money out of campaign financing and its attendant corruption.

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I dont know. I think that the whole focus on the candidate or party campaign budget misses the point. We'll just see more shady "swift boat vets" type (I am sure dte can fill us in on left wing equivalents) organisations that campaign independently. You could of course claim that increased regulation can tackle that as well, but at some point the cost of controlling something becomes greater than the gain from controlling it.

What about making all broadcast and print campaign ads free as a public service (up to so many per marker per candidate with an even number between them as a prereq.) The media outlets can use them as tax breaks or something, or get subsized at a low level with a word/time limit. And blogging and so forth is already pretty much free.

If you lower the cost of campaigning and make it obligatory that those using public funding not be able to have any actual money dispensed directly to them or their parties, but have it go instead directly to the providers of campaign services, perhaps with mandated standard costs and *after* the service has been rendered, that might help.

Not a bad idea, but who gets the vouchers--how low do you set that bar? If you go equal time, do you really want the democrats to have the same voice as dte's Dictatorships You'll Love Party? Should they have equal time, or should it be proportional? How do we set the proportion?

I honestly like your idea of keeping it "non-cash", but it still gets very complicated in a hurry.

The "how" is the central problem in campaign finance reform, for sure. It presupposes that our congress can agree about something, figure out how to do it, and then pass it—all of which is kind of an exercise in fantasy atm.

But I would say, yes to the idea that every single person who wants to run for office and can get the necessary signatures( ie not setting the bar too low—like less than .0000002 % of local population or something,) have equal time and equal opportunity to make their case, including not just your enlightened dictator brand, but even the skinheads, bunker dwellers, treehuggers and believers in UFOs, should they be able to appeal to a large enough following to make them relevant. My husband says the best way to defeat the nuts is to let them talk and defeat themselves.

That could have worked in a world with less pluralism, but it gets harder to enforce the more diverse media market you have. I suspect you'll end up moving much of the campaigning to orgs and channels that claim to be unaffiliated but in reality just are (less transparent) fronts for the forces behind the candidates. I doubt the gains are big enough to warrant clamping down on press freedom with elaborate regulations. I know you guys have the best intentions, but the patching up suggested reminds me of the adding of epicycles by defenders of Aristotelean physics.

Yeeks, Zaleukos, the first sentence of that article gave me a blinding headache.

Surely you're not just being defeatist for the sake of it? Even if we Americans are being children about all this, at least we're trying to make some better sandcastles, here.

I think I just got lumped in with the skinheads and treehuggers as nutjobs...

Yes, it's easy to find faults with any idea, than actually come up with a balanced concept. The vouchers I think is a good idea. Speaking of abuses, one can see the same thing with privately funded campaign contributions, plus corruption.

dteowner said:

I think I just got lumped in with the skinheads and treehuggers as nutjobs…

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I actually had your fine party in its own little subgroup, but if the straightjacket fits…

magerette said:

Yeeks, Zaleukos, the first sentence of that article gave me a blinding headache.

Surely you're not just being defeatist for the sake of it? Even if we Americans are being children about all this, at least we're trying to make some better sandcastles, here.

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Sorry about the headache

I admit that I am a pessimist by nature I think rules have to be simple and easy to police to work, and the historical attempts at campaign finance control that I can think of have either just shifted the abuses to other venues, or been thinly veiled tools for governments silencing the opposition. Experience from attempts to create level playing field in other areas also indicate that there are pretty serious limits to what a state can do, without turning itself into a greater evil than the uneven playing field.

That said I can understand why you guys are frustrated over the quality of political campaigning and the influence of lobby groups. If the flawed image that reach this side of the Atlantic is anywhere near correct the situation is pretty dire...

In an attempt to be a bit more constructive I'll present some things countries could do:

1) ban anonymous campaign donations above a certain small amount, say USD/EUR 100. (I dont know what the US rules are for this, but this is one reform that my country soreley needs!)
2) a blanket ban on ALL political TV ads (not ideal, but at least a simple rule that doesnt exactly take away quality campaigning)

Otherwise I think many of the factors that make political culture dirty, in the US and elsewhere, are deep lying cultural issues that wont be affected by regulation. Utter polarisation and distrust of the MSM (or FOX depending on where you come from) telling the truth even about the colour of the sky, an electoral system that makes it pointless for many to vote, and generally apathethic voters to name a few...

Thrasher said:

Yes, it's easy to find faults with any idea, than actually come up with a balanced concept. The vouchers I think is a good idea.

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That is of course a fair criticism of my position A voucher system to cover a small, well defined, part of the campaigning is the kind of limited attempt at levelling playing fields that can have a positive net effect without infringing much on anyones freedoms. But it is important to keep it simple...

Thrasher said:

Speaking of abuses, one can see the same thing with privately funded campaign contributions, plus corruption.

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I would say that you simply get a different kind of corruption, not necessarily less, and that many schemes to remove private funding simply will push it to indirect channels rather than eliminate it. There is a cost in freedom of expression as well.

Zaleukos said:

1) ban anonymous campaign donations above a certain small amount, say USD/EUR 100. (I dont know what the US rules are for this, but this is one reform that my country soreley needs!)

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What's the problem with big, anonymous donations?

Übereil

Without knowing who the donors are, how could one have even a hope of learning if the politicians have been "bought"? Large anonymous donations are also disproportionately directed towards one political party in Sweden (Moderaterna), who - surprise! - are against transparency reforms that would reveal their donors, citing the right to not reveal who you vote for in elections.

I wonder, if donations are anonymous then how do Moderaterna (to take an example) know from where their money comes? I mean, it's pretty obvious big buissness likes them, but specifically who made the donations?

Übereil

Obviously, they're not anonymous to Moderaterna, but currently, the party isn't required to reveal their names.