Disclosure and privacy

[Jean Milgram &lt;jmilgram&gt;</li>]

The money and politics problem is that money buys influence. Instead of trying to control the amount of money given or the amount spent, we need to just cut the connection between money and influence.

How about if, instead of full disclosure, we do just the opposite and make all contributions anonymous? No one - especially the candidate - would know who donates to his/her campaign. 

A trust fund could be set up for each election and the trustees would distribute the money according to the donor's instructions but without any disclosure about the source. People could of course claim they had given to a campaign, just as they now claim to have voted a certain way, but the candidate could never know for sure.

A problem with this is that the amount of money contributed would undoubtedly go way down, since money would no longer buy influence. But some people who do not want their political views made public might donate whereas now they won't.

Making the ballot secret eliminated a lot of corruption. How about doing the same thing with political contributions?