Steele on Electoral Reform – Part 9: Funding
Qualifying candidates will receive public funding in equal amounts. Political campaign committees are made illegal and lose their public charters. For the purposes of this Act corporations are not people and may not contribute nor cause to be contributed, any campaign funds. Issue advocacy and advertising are not tax-deductible. Air time and media print space for all candidates is free and equal.
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It is criminally insane to make elections contingent on raising enough money to pay for grotesquely expensive broadcast media advertisements, especially when all those using the public airwaves for profit do so under a public charter.
Apart from reversing Citizens United, which is the final nail in the coffin of a completely corrupt government, and establishing public funding for all qualified candidates (with a uniform national standard for what constitutes qualification), we must eliminate the public access cost of campaigning by mandating, as part of the public charter, free and equal time for all qualified candidates to present themselves to all voters.
As with all other provisions of the Electoral Reform Act of 2012, this provision alone will not fix the system to any significant degree. It is only when the whole is considered, that once and readily see how directly we can restore integrity to the electoral system and then to governance, and finally to the economy and society.
Previous: Part 8: Districts
Next: Part 10: Legislation
