Choice 1

[Denise Hood <hoodsx3@aol.com>]

Once again, I am getting in on the action very late. But I have read everyone's postings, and think this dialogue is wonderful and educational! 

I support Choice #1. I am afraid that I just do not buy the argument that campaign contributions fall into the category of Free Speech, protected by the First Amendment. I see free speech, with regards to political campaigns and supporting your candidate, as involving such things as participating in dialogues and debates, town-hall forums with your candidates, writing letters to the editor of your newspapers in support of your candidate, phone-banking and doorbelling on behalf of your candidate, displaying yard signs, and bumper stickers, wearing campaign buttons and t-shirts, placing ads and distributing literature, and other things that I may have overlooked. But money contributions as a form of free speech? That seems like a REAL stretch to me. It's more like buying influence, and the more money you have to give, the more influence you are able to buy. Since I do not view campaign contributions as covered under Free Speech, I have no problem with setting limits. I DO think that even individual contributions need to be limited, I can't really say a dollar amount. If we are to allow for the "inflation since 1974" argument, I would certainly say NO MORE THAN $2,000.00 for an individual. I think that corporate/PAC/Lobby money needs to be TOTALLY eliminated. How ELSE can we control this runaway problem? Any piecemeal, limited approaches will just allow our Congressmen to search for "wiggle-room", and the tide of money will NOT be stemmed, and neither will the corruption that it buys.And if we can guarantee that corporate money can be eliminated, then by all means, eliminate contributions by labor unions! But we cannot have one without the other, or we will unfairly be targeting a MAJOR source of campaign funding for one party, without addressing the issue of where the other party gets their money.

Yes, I support public funding for elections, by this I assume you mean the $3.00 per taxpayer voluntary contribution. If we succeed in passing REAL campaign finance reform, as outlined above, then perhaps public funding should go from "voluntary" to "mandatory," and be increased to $5.00 per taxpayer, or perhaps a little higher. This, and a combination of networks providing "free airtime" to candidates. All the details of the "free airtime" would have to be worked out by someone wiser than myself. But I feel that this "free airtime" should be a requirement of all network t.v. and radio stations, who have an F.C.C. license. And this "free airtime" should be divided equally among all candidates. This free air time should be used for "positive campaign activity" such as debates and forums, and town-halls, and ISSUES advertizing, with positive "me" messages, NOT for slanderous attack ads on opponents. They can use their OTHER campaign funds to pay for the negative stuff, if they must INSIST upon negativity. Personally, those negative ads NEVER worked for me. They only make me want to go out and vote for their opponent.

THe whole idea of campaigning, as we know it now, needs to be carefully studied, and re-vamped. Elections do NOT have to cost so much. For one thing, we could shorten the campaign season. I am also interested, as someone pointed out earlier, in how other countries conduct their political campaigns, and how they are funded. I KNOW that Americans think we know it all, but look at this last election, and Florida, for heaven's sake! There were people suggesting that we ought to have U.N. Neutral Election Observers sent to Florida to observe the recount. We should swallow our national pride, and study how England and other European countries and Japan, for example, conduct and fund their political campaigns. Maybe we could LEARN something!