Forget about trying to regulate the amount of money each candidate can raise.

Instead let’s limit by geography.

The only people allowed to donate to a particular candidate’s campaign are registered voters in that candidate’s district.

So a candidate for a House seat can only raise money from his the constituents in his district, a Senator from registered voters in his state and only Presidential candidates would be able to raise money nationwide.

Such a system would end the practice of a Hilary Clinton running for Senate in New York raising a big chunk of her war chest in California or Rep. Don Young from Alaska getting his cash from Texas and Gulf Coast Oil people.

Candidates would be forced to spend more time in their home districts raising money (and listening to their ACTUAL constituents) rather than on various fundraising jaunts hundreds if not thousands of miles away. And since in many districts the population is so poor many candidates won’t be able to afford big TV buys they would have to do two things; spend more time in ‘town meetings’ and other such events directly interacting with voters to get their support and two, they would have a serious incentive to improve the overall economic situation of their district.

Such a system would also even out the process. Bill Gates is free to give as much money as he wants to his Representative and Senators and the Presidential race but he can’t use his money to influence the races in my district or state. In other words the big donors would be truly limited in who they could give money too.

The system passes constitutional muster because it in no way limits anyone’s speech rights. Everybody has their own Representative, Senator and President that they can donate money to. They just can’t give money outside their district the same way they can’t vote outside their district.

Of course, since such a system might actually work in limited big money politics and forcing politicians to be more responsive to their constituents it will never pass.

Real Campaign Finance Reform would be to have completely, absolutely contribution free campaigns funded only with public monies.

The cost would be less.

The influence peddling would be eliminated.

We'd get to see how these people use a budget. After all, we aren't hiring them to be fundraising magnets, we're hiring them to oversee the country's budget, laws and resources.

The biggest problem with public financing is who and how does the decision get made about which candidates get the money.

Let’s just look at the Presidential Race. There are currently 11 declared candidates between the Democrats and Republicans. And those are just the declared candidates getting invited to the debates, in each party there are couple of other even less well known guys floating around that get NO attention from anybody. And that’s just the major parties, there is still the Green Party, Socialist Party and dozens of smaller parties that rarely show up on the national (or even local) radar. Outside that you have the undeclared candidates (Thompson, Bloomberg, maybe Gore) all running around.

So how do you divvy up the public pie?

I presume one of the goals of public financing is to bring new voices to the national stage so limiting funding to just the two parties is out. So what’s the cut off for who gets the funding? Is it any registered party? Any party with a registered base over X amount (and determining the X is a debate in and of itself)? Polling totals? Votes in a previous election?

And then once you decide which parties to give money too, how do you decide who in that party to give money too. Like it or not Ron Paul is a fringe candidate within the Republican Party. Even if he had a billion dollars to throw around he’s still got no chance of winning the Republican nomination. So does he, and the even more fringe candidates, get the same amount of funding as Guilani and Rommey?

And more importantly who would you pick to make all those decisions?

And that’s just the complications for the Presidential race. The same issues are multiplied a dozen fold once you start going down the line to Senatorial and House races (smaller parties will pop up like weeds at the local level).

My idea, while not perfect, at least limits the money to individual districts. In other words, the people a candidate is raising money from are the people he’s supposed to representing anyway.

Now if you combine this with RobertDublin’s idea to limit campaign spending you could create a very effective and open system for financing campaigns.

Like I’ve said before. It’ll never pass.

....so while rich people/organizations won't be able to influence local races outside of their own areas, they will still pretty much able to control every race they have the "right" to donate to.

Possibly, but since the Rich tend to be concentrated in a few areas that will lower the over all number of seats that they can influence (say 150 House seats instead of all 400 or so). Also since I doubt the rich agree completely on every issue they’ll be trying to outbid their neighbors to the politician who works best for them. Bill Gates V Paul Allen in Washington for example.

The other option for the rich is to spread out more, move into poorer areas of the country and boost capital expenditures and property values across the nation.

The key thing to remember is that with this approach the representative your influencing is YOUR representative, not mine. Politicians will be forced to deal with the people they’re actually supposed to be representing anyway. Which is the point.

I’m not saying this is a perfect solution, but it’s a heck of a lot better than our current one.

I agree with you. I would also limit donations to individuals who are registered voters. No organizational donation at all. No donations from foreign sources. No bundles of cash from unions, or from corporations. My dad was a VP at Mellon Bank and was required to donate 10% of his income to the company PAC. He was reimbursed with a bonus at the end of the year.

I'm not sure how to control people like the Swift Boat Vets. For one they should be forced to reveal the names of their donors if they get more than $200 from an individual and again they should be required to validate voter registration for the donor.

Geographic donations limited to individuals, not corportations/organizations - sounds nice, but is patently unfair, undemocratic, and probably unconstitiutional.

Where to begin? The abridgement of the First Amendment by the latest campaign finance reform bill would be shredded by the courts by help of the sheer volume of business owners (small, medium and large) who very rightly argue that they have a right to contribute or run their own candidate and/or issue ads to influence voters. And why not - this is America after all, political discourse is their right. And these business owners don't have to live in a district to be impacted by legislation voted on by legislators elected therein. Likewise organizations, unions, trade, environmental, etc. People have a right to assembly, influence others to their point of view and to speak their minds.

Public financing of candidates and banning political speech from occuring in the days before an election, although maybe pure in heart in today's environment, is hideously short-sighted and 180 degrees to what the framers of the constitution wanted.

Political contributions buy influence, you say? Get over it. The federal government controls lots and lots of money, and weilds lots and lots of power. Therefore, it will draw lots and lots of attention from those who stand to benefit from it. There will be imperfect solutions, cozy arrangements from time to time, and a general wobble from left to right to left again as this big country zig-zags down the road. That's what it's all about.

Remember, it's not who gets the most money, it's who gets the most votes.

The first half of your post sounds good on the surface, but you need to keep in mind that those fuckheads don't just screw up their consitituency's loives. They totally fuck up our lives. Look what the miserable sons of bitches are doing with foreigners. It is disgusting. We are killing our soldiers in Iraq because of this supposed dire threat and we leave the border open to the south and we have more animosity with Mexico and Mexicans than we do with Mohammedism, really.

Since the Senator from New York can so easily ruin my life just by getting elected and doing what is natural to her, fucking with people's freedom and dignity to gratify her own ego, I want to donate to her opponent. What about the assholes who now sit on committee chairs? I hate Ried and Pelosi. They are a greater threat to American's Freedom than Hitler was. Hitler's Germany was more free than the United States. No man in Germany had to work until the third week in July just to pay off the aparatchiks even during the crisis of the war.

Alan Keyes has the answer to campaign finance reform. Make the candidate publish a list of his donors and how much they donated. Put real teeth into the disclosure law and let the people decide who they want to vote for after they look up on the internet who owns their candidates. If you want to take 1 billin dollars from George Soros, then that should be George's right to give and Hillary's or Osamabama's right to receive any amount at all as long as it is disclosed.

That's freedom and that's dignity. And that's American. Anything less than that is Red Chinese, North Korean or Democrat Party chickenshit.

Dd

The reason Tom Delay was indicted is because he enabled a corporation with no interests in Texas to move money to the RNC and then the RNC moved that money into the Texas state campaigns. It seems that Texas has passed a law prohibiting out of state money from being contributed to state political campaigns. If you were correct, then the Texas law is unconstitutional.

When you reference the intent of the founding fathers do you actually think they could have forseen a day when $1 billion dollars would be spent on the presidential campaign? Do you actually think that the republican success at fund raising has nothing to do with their political success? There were two or three donors who funded the Swift boat vets. How many votes did that cost Kerry?

The usual outcome of an election is that the one with the money, gets the votes.

Have you looked at who donated the $350 million or so that got Bush elected in 2004? Oil companies, pharmacuticals, insurance companies....Now do you wonder why Bush has done so much for them?

What have Reid, Pelosi or H. Clinton done to make the US less free than nazi Germany? Did they authorize illegal surveillance and wiretaps? Did they dismantle constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure? Did they prevent people accused of breaking the law from having legal counsel? Did they work to send taxpayer money to churches and religions groups? Have they worked to damage the reputations of people who criticize them? Have they had people arrested for exercising their first amendment rights to stand up and voice criticism or even wear t-shirts expressing an opinion contrary to the dem party?

So the very fact that Hillary was elected has ruined your so called life? Now that I know that I may send her a contribution, even though I don't know much about her politics.

Bush and Cheney have been the greatest advance towards dictatorship that our country has seen since Nixon and the Saturday night massacre.

But there are often regional issues where a neighboring Senator or congressmans input will have a direct bearing upon peoples lives that are not in their own district. If i choose to support a Senator who shares my beliefs and her State boundry is only a short few miles from where I live then I have the right and intend to keep the right to support her monetarily and verbally. We are a free nation and a free people. Free people have a right to support whomever they please.