From: stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 12:26:08 -0700 (PDT)
To: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Subject: Re: Stopping the buying of candidates
Message-ID: <199610251922.PAA03919@caig1.att.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Fundamentally, you won't stop the buying of candidates unless
elected politicians have nothing to sell.  Technology won't fix that :-)

What technology _can_ do is make sure that bribes/contributions can be 
delivered quietly and untraceably, and that the contributors can let the
contributee know who gave the money and what sort of favors they're
interested in.  It can also simplify private coordination of soft money -
letting contributors know what newspapers to put privately-funded ads in,
generating astroturf letters to editors, announcing press releases from
"Citizens for Better Health Care", "independent political polling" to
find what issues the public thinks are important or could be
manipulated into caring about by a good campaign, "marketing focus groups"
by various front groups that can be leaked to the campaign, etc.
Then of course there's leaking rumors about the opponents'
Nasty Habits, complete with nicely-morphed pictures, 
providing lucrative speaking opportunities for TV "journalists", 
producing slick pre-produced video-bytes for the TV stations, etc.

You might get politicians to agree not to accept direct contributions
in return for giving them our tax money to spend, but that won't stop the
"advance auction of future services" - it'll just raise the stakes.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk
  Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_,
  and the politicians had to count them all.