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October 19, 2006

Campaign Finance Reform - change the paradigm

I just read a post over at Blue Oregon on campaign finance reform and it got me to thinking...

I utterly reject any suggestion that spending money is a form of "Speech" in a constitutional sense of the word. Therefore I'm very partial to CFR approaches involving limited spending as well as voter-owned systems such as Portland has. But the reality is that there are ways around every approach. Big money will find its way into campaigns one way or another.

So change the paradigm!

Instead of trying to cap spending, why don't we instead force uberly strict disclosure of exactly who, where, why, when and how much money was given and used on any kind of election issue, whether it be for candidates or referendums or ballot initiatives.

Any type of campaigning (mailings, radio/TV/newspaper ads) would have to contain a disclosure akin to the Surgeon General's warning on tobacco products listing where the money came from, who gave it and what state that entity operates from. And make it the rule that this disclosure has to be in the same font size as the largest font used in the advertisement. The only exception should be private donations from individuals. Anything that came from another PAC or any sort of corporate or political entity would have to be included.

Further, we should institute a fee on any and all non-individual donations which would go to the Secretary of State's office and would be used to pay for broad dissemination of the who, what, where, when and how much data... to be published and posted in a prominent place in... say every publically-owned library in the state (including all school libraries) to make it as accessable as possible for the average citizen to take a peek at exactly who is trying to get them to vote a particular way on any given candidate/referendum/measure.

So for example, a group calling itself something innocent-sounding like Oregon Family Farm Association PAC which is being funded primarily by the timber industry and real estate developers to push Ballot Measure 40 (to create geographical districts from which Oregon Supreme Court and circuit court judges would be elected) should be fully identified as such using the above procedures. Who, what, where, when and how much.

Then let them all spend as much as they like.

Posted by Kevin at October 19, 2006 09:38 AM