Should political candidates in the USA not be allowed to receive campaign monies from anyone?

Question

I heard this is the case in the UK. Might be a good idea.

Answer 1

This might be feasible if we also required that the television networks provide free time to all the candidates for political advertising. This is done in some countries in Europe. It is the high cost of television air time that creates the need to raise gigantic amounts of money for political campaigns.

Answer 2

Because the media will only allow politicians a few sound bites during their campaign, the candidates have to buy time. The cost of campaigning is astronomical when media time is factored into other requirements like travel, staff pay, etc. Only an extremely wealthy individual could afford to run for public office if candidates did not receive campaign donations.

Also, the donations received by the candidate are a kind of vote that tells those involved in the campaign whether the campaign is going well or not. The problem is those that make large donations usually expect favors in return.

The best approach is to limit the amount that can be given to a campaign by individual citizens and not allow contributions by special interests. This solution may work in a perfect world. Intense monitoring of campaign financial activities by campaign finance officials can also help to eliminate some of the campaign finance corruption.

All of government is an agreement between the governed and those who govern and unfortunately in this present era that agreement is corrupted. Citizen watchfulness is the best means of monitoring their elected officials and their elections.

In politics there is no honour. --Benjamin Disraeli

The hardest thing about an political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy in the winning. --Adlai Stevenson

Answer 3

The answer may be to publicly fund all campaigns and eliminate all private and corporate contributions. Funding would be greatly smaller than the obscene amounts of cash poured into the last several national campaigns, and would be given out conditioned upon certain restrictions regarding content, medium, and tone. Additionally, ALL candidates registered with enough signatures should be given equal airtime on broadcast television.

I would prefer that most public money then be used for travel and staffing expenses for public appearances. Make candidates and voters meet each other and talk with each other MUCH more extensively, rather than have all political ideas filtered through vapid TV ads and soundbite-oriented debates. Make 'em work for it.

Lock all political pundits, ALL of them, from Begala to Bill Schneider to Al Franken to Ann Coulter, in a box for a year prior to the presidential elections.

Harsh and undemocratic? Maybe. Complicated and bureaucratic? uh-huh, sure is. Necessary? HELL YES. I'm tired of the campaign trail to any elected office resembling a trip to the red-light district. And I'm tired of asinine phrases like "flip-flopper" and "family values" summarizing the bulk of political content the media feeds to the voters.

Answer 4

Then how would they afford to campaign.
In the US politicians are locked to the need to raise funds. It becomes the most important facet of the campaign and it is what ties them to the contributors and the lobbyists.

The safest way to do it would be to use the political fund taken from people's taxes to setup a fund for all the candidates. To be a candidate the person has to raise a certain amount of money, the same amount of money. Then each candidate will start off with the same amount of money and they will have enough to campaign with, because they will all have access to the national pot. The serious contenders will be only those that can raise enough money to qualify.

Of course this tends to put money in charge not the people.

Answer 5

The only thing here is that Britain has a parlimentary government. We do not.

I'm not 100% accurate on this, but I believe that in their system, they elect officials from zones (not sure what the zones actually are, be it states, couties, cities, etc). Those officials make up their house of Commons. From there, they nominate and elect a Prime Minister, and not the people. So a Prime Minister really campains to their House of Commons, and not the population as a whole unlike our politicians.

It's a lot more costly to campain to the population as a whole over a select group.

Answer 6

They definitely need to address this issue. We should attempt to give candidates equal rights to media coverage, debates, and advertisement.

That way, we can make a well informed decion as to who is best.

Anyone afraid of this is afraid that the best man for the job will be chosen.

Answer 7

Dennis Kucinich, presidential candidate, does not accept corporate donations-only private. This is admiral, but he doesn't get much publicity. Also, not accepting any money, would mean only the people who all ready have thier own money would have an advantage.

Answer 8

Maybe people only but no corporations who are not human and do not have feelings and will aways go as far as the rules let them. Corporations are why we cannot have third party president and their moral values are to the shareholders and profit or they will be fired.

Answer 9

I don't mind financially backing my candidate. If my dollars help elect my choice, so be it.

Answer 10

I don't think so. Then only the very rich would run for office.