From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 22:55:13 -0700 (PDT)
To: mjmiski@execpc.com
Subject: Re: Stopping the buying of candidates
Message-ID: <199610240554.WAA28342@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 10:57 AM 10/23/96 +0000, Matthew J. Miszewski wrote:
>
>> At 08:13 PM 10/22/96 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>(snip)
>
>> Sure, you can't keep people from talking.  However, one way to sabotage the 
>> usefulness of telling is to allow everybody else as well to make the same 
>> claim, with essentially no way for the candidates to tell who is REALLY 
>> giving the money.  Make the lie just as credible as the truth, and the 
value 
>> of knowing the truth is destroyed.  If nobody can trust anyone else's word, 
>> then no candidate could know who REALLY ought to be rewarded for a campaign 
>> contribution, breaking the circle of quid-pro-quo.  
>
>Sorry, but this would depend upon equal access to a number of things. 
>Primarily, John Q. Public does not have sufficient real world access 
>to politicians to assert that he is the one who donated.  Lobbyists, 
>OTOH, most certainly do.  Secondly, access to the timing of donations 
>is something only the donor can know.  
>
>"Wink, wink.  Nudge, nudge, Senator.  Look at your account balance 
>tomorrow.  Never forget the National Association of Manufacturers was 
>there for you"  (Obviously a completely random selection 8-)

While I have worked through essentially none of the details, if the system 
can be implemented well enough, all this kind of information will be blinded 
into oblivion.  Donations won't be tallied individually, and news of their 
arrival will be disguised, possibly by limiting the size that is credited to 
the candidate per day and thus in effect splitting up a donation to make it 
"arrive" over a period of a week or two.  Only overall totals will be 
reported, possibly rounded to only two significant figures, and even then 
possibly only on a weekly basis.   


>> The candidate still gets the money, of course, and the contributor is still 
>> free to both donate and speak...separately.  The thing that's been cut off 
>> is the association between the money and the speech...which is exactly what 
>> the problem is, isn't it?
>
>See above for why the connection is not.

Try again.  Rather than trying to prove that a system won't work, why not 
help develop one that will?

>And the problem is 
>generally not money, but rather the delivery of votes.  A candidate 
>will do whatever it takes to get elected.  Often this means $$$ for 
>campaign expenses.  More often it means vote delivery.

But "vote delivery" can't be proven, or even demonstrated with a strong 
degree of assurance.  


>Get rid of the career politician and you get rid of the motivation 
>behind the pursuit of political money and vote delivery. 

I'd LOVE to "get rid of the career politician."  And every other kind of 
politician, as well!


> I hate to 
>actually advocate term limits, but a critical vote in Congress is 
>much harder to control when the rep is only interested in serving the 
>public because there is no chance of re-election.  After all, it is 
>not donations that are the evil here, it is the control of gov't 
>action, right? 

What I consider wrong is that government affects way too large a fraction of 
our lives, without apparent Constitutional justification.  If the government 
at all levels were only, say, 1/10th of its current size, there would be 
much less motivation for corruption.  


Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com