I agree completely. Further, I believe that with publicly funded elections, we could elect the entire Federal government for less than the $200 million that GWB alone will spend in this election cycle. The only way we will get a government responsive to the people is to ensure that the people pay for elections rather than the corporations, unions, and special interest groups.
cool idea. just so i have it straight... the existing parties and the powers that be control all the campaigning. No input from outside groups. If you're not 'in' the circle, then you probably don't need to be heard. (only partly kidding...though it's currently terribly abused, i'm not sure i'd want to shut out comment from outside groups. Perhaps spending limits are more paletable). Plus i'd lose too many evenings watching those darned debates
it's not that outside groups couldn't be heard, i'd just ban political adverts. let 'em have their websites and friends in the media, publish all the books they want, but keep 'em off the airwaves. moreover, there could be no active campaigning by either party, or candidate, prior to labor day (excluding primaries of course).
With all these good ideas and open dialog on the board I guess the only question now is... why aren't WE running this country?
This is a fantastic idea, though I would also ban all campaign "donations." Also, it would be a great idea to have a panel of fact-checkers present at the debates. But, even though it seems most would agree on this issue (as I imagine most Americans would agree with it), the current political culture in D.C. of million-dollar "fundraisers" and conspiratorial dirt-digging isn't going to just up and change because there are better ideas in existence - that culture is far too entrenched, and far too many powerful people have interest in keeping it entrenched, for it to be bettered through the introduction of better ideas and rational, fair discourse.
I'm down with Basso's idea but we need to open the elections up to more parties without the stupid guidelines that they have to get a 5% or whatever on the national elections. I would much rather see Congress have 10-15 parties with seats rather than 2 parties and the odd independent. The better a democracy the more voices that are heard right? After these other parties start gaining some recognition in Congress they could then field some legitimate candidates for President as well.
Me too. Capitol Hill needs an enema. Or at least a lot of different kinds of poo. The 5% figure is the percentage of the popular vote that a candidate must have in order to receive federal funding to campaign:From the FEC website A candidate must have 15 percent support in an average of five national polls by the time of the first debate in order to be invited:From the Debate Commission's Website The Commision of Presidential Debates claims to be a non-partisan organization, but it's decidedly not NON-partisan, but rather, it's BI-partisan: Some information on the Partisan nature of the CPD.
The debates have sucked since the Republicans and Democrats took them over from the League of Women Voters. The last person we saw as a third party candidate in a debate was Ross Perot.
Great idea but how would the republican party be able to get any message across with the media showing its favoritism for the left?
