Anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time knows that I am a huge advocate of campaign finance reform. Our democracy has been destroyed by the current system of “flood them with money” to the point that we no longer have a democracy, but rather an auction. Now Gallup is out with a new poll showing that a majority of Americans are ready for a change as well.
The questions were phrased as though the respondent were voting for these policies. For example:
Suppose that on Election Day you could vote on key issues as well as candidates. Would you vote for or against a law that would
Establish a new campaign finance system where federal campaigns are funded by the government and all contributions from individuals and private groups are banned
On this question 50% of respondents said they would vote for it, while 44% said they would vote against it (60% of Democrats for versus only 41% of Republicans for). That’s a rather significant improvement since 2007, when 57% said they would be against a publicly financed campaign system.
But when it comes to limiting campaign finances, we see a huge boost in support. Here is the wording of that question:
Suppose that on Election Day you could vote on key issues as well as candidates. Would you vote for or against a law that would –
Put a limit on the amount of money candidates for the U.S. House and Senate can raise and spend on their political campaigns
Here support jumps to 79% for, with only 19% against. That’s 4/5ths of Americans supporting such a move, and when it comes to partisanship, the results are almost equal along party lines.
So perhaps we finally have a starting point. Let’s work on limiting campaign finances, and limiting to a realistic point. But we can also impose a bit of that public system into it, and it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a dime. Require local news media to run X amount of campaign commercials per candidate, as part of their agreement to use the public airwaves. That would take a huge chunk of needed money out of the equation.
It’s time to restore our democracy and return our government to a government by the people for the people. We now have a starting point with an enormous amount of public support, so the next big obstacle is to get something moving in Congress or even on the states’ level.