• themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    The trouble with a time-limted campaign is that it’s a big country, and politics are local. You’d basically hamstring every candidate who does not have a national profile.

    Nationally funded campaigns are the best path to getting money out of politics. Money isn’t speech, and donations to candidates should be entirely illegal. If anyone wants to run issue ads, that’s fine, make your case to the American public and disclose the source of the funds. But endorsing a specific candidate is quid pro quo bribery.

    Each state funds its own events, and qualifying candidates get a stipend for travel and lodging. No staff, no speech writers, just the candidates and their ideas. Show up, make your case, move on to the next state. 50 debates would cost a tiny fraction of what we spend now, and it would be our money buying it.

    There are a thousand kinks in our electoral process, from balloting to gerrymandering to disenfranchisement, but none of it gets fixed while the process is inherently corrupted by legal bribery.