Sunday, December 7, 2014

Campaign Finance

After watching the documentary "Big Sky, Big Money" I can tell that we need some more finance reform. A lot of the system actually screams corruption in my opinion. The fact that a Super Pac can give information to 501(c)(4)s which happen to have an address that leads to a mailbox in a UPS store is absolutely ridiculous. Then there is also the fact that the Super Pac might not even know who owns the 501(c)(4). Not only can stuff like this happen, but the system also leaves too many loopholes that companies, Super PACs, PACs, 527s and 501(c)(4)s can use. Also, wealthy individuals have the opportunity to essentially buy elections by donating as much currency as they want to these groups. Also, regarding the Citizens United v. FEC case, corporations and unions should not have a say in elections. This is not democracy and it screams corruption in a government where the people are supposed to elect representatives. This also limits everyone else's speech by essentially giving corporations more of a say in what happens compared to everyone else's small voice. The best way to fix this system to limit the corruption  as much as possible is to use the voucher system combined with the principles of the public matching system used for congressional elections. In fact, under this plan, "the government would give every citizen a $50 refundable tax credit to donate to candidates, and would match every $1 of private donations with $5 if that person rejects PAC money, and with $10 if the campaign only accepts small donations"(Azmat Khan). This plan will help campaigns get a lot of money based on a lot of small donations instead of a few very large donations. It also helps to make everyone's voice heard equally. This also helps to limit the power of Super PACs, PACs and Corporations in elections. It will not completely get rid of the problem, but it will be a good start at the least the trying to get the least amount of corruption.










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