Comment by studentrob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by studentrob | Hacker News Reader

I'm conflicted or perhaps uninformed about what could be the real solution for reducing corruption in politics.

I am against corporations spending large sums of money to influence politics because in the long term the rights of individuals, particularly groups of individuals who do not have a lot of money, erode. This weakens our founding fathers' protections against tyranny of the majority.

I'm also very pro free speech on the individual level. And I feel if I ran my own company I would want to be able to advertise and even lobby for policies in which I believe.

Yet sometimes wealth comes from being at the right place at the right time, or wealth grows on wealth. And, in the interest of advancing society, I am not okay with our representatives being elected based on who threw them the most money. It's supposed to be one person one vote, not one dollar one vote.

Still, even without the super PACs, won't corporations simply find another way to spend money to influence politics? Is this how it worked before 2010? Do we benefit from the the current system by being able to actually track the donations?

Does anyone know in detail the solution Sanders or others have in mind?

Sanders supports a Constitutional amendment to allow Congress to regulate campaign finance; in other words, Sanders would support the first Constitutional amendment in the history of the US to deliberately abridge the First Amendment, and would do so to regulate political speech.

Thanks for your reply. So presumably this would bring us back to the state of things from 1971 with the entrance of the Federal Election Campaign Act, including the limitation on spending money on media?

It sounds tricky. The most powerful thing about free speech is the right to say whatever you want about your government. But given the apparent level of corruption, maybe it's time to limit corporations' ability to make political speech. Is that what he's proposing?

I read this on publicintegrity.org,

> It wasn’t until 1971 that Congress got serious and passed the Federal Election Campaign Act, which required the full reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures. It limited spending on media advertisements. But that portion of the law was ruled unconstitutional — and that actually opened the door for the Citizens United decision.

Sanders' amendment essentially says that nothing in the First Amendment can be construed to limit Congress's ability to protect the integrity of elections, and (this is explicit in the amendment and without precedent anywhere else in the Constitution) from the wealthy.

He delegates to Congress the details on how to use that new power to suppress the First Amendment.

So elections are more important than free speech?

Darn, I disagree. It's the first amendment for good reason. I want to like someone who will really do something about this but I think this solution is a rabbit hole.

Free speech is the most basic protection individuals have for asserting their rights. Elections follow. As much as I'd love to see political corruption reduced, I think those things are already in the proper order of importance in the constitution.

Maybe we can try out his amendment for a few years, but it would be nice to have some further open and public discussion about what might happen with that new amendment in place.

What happens, for example, if a foreign company starts supporting a US political candidate? Would a US company be allowed to invest in said foreign company, or buy their products? Would we start censoring the internet for unlawful political advertisements?

Money isn't speech. You can say whatever you want. You're just not entitled to a platform in which to do it.

When you start telling people that they can't build their own platforms, you're getting to a place where "you can say whatever you want" becomes a pretty empty principle.

You've already said this 2-3x elsewhere in this thread and people gave you thoughtful replies there. I agree mostly with the counter arguments you received.

Do you not see how difficult it is to identify what money is being spent in support of political campaigns and what money is not? Or, do you trust people who are corrupting politics to properly label how they are spending money as either a) on politics or b) not on politics? If not, who will figure it out and how? What if a foreign company starts advertising online? Do we censor that? Do we forbid US companies from investing in them which is a form of indirect support?

The whole reason I posted the above was to raise awareness that simply ending citizens united is not a whole solution unto itself. It may just drive the money underground and make it harder to track. We need a real public, open discussion about this, giving proper thought to everyone's ideas, or we'll never move forward

I do normally agree with your posts but this seems ... distressingly principled, if you like :)

If we adhere to the idea that "money is speech" (Buckley v Valeo) and resist all attempts at suppressing speech, how do we avoid an eventual slide into plutocracy when upwards of 90% of all elections these days are won by the candidate who spends the most money?

How do you think elections get won?

They get won by getting the most votes. And how do they get the most votes? Well, by persuading the most people (of those who bother to vote) that your position on the issues is the one that will work the best for them. Getting that message out takes money. And how do you get the money? Well, by persuading the people who give money to politicians that your position on the issues is the one that will work the best for them.

"The most money" and "the most votes" are not completely unrelated, and they're not related only by "money lets you yell the loudest at easily-influenced voters". Campaigns attract money for the same reason they attract votes; it's not surprising to see a large correlation.

I don't know what I think about campaign finance reform. On the one hand I have the obvious concerns about money buying influence. On the other hand, money tried real real hard to buy the 2012 election and failed comically.

Meanwhile, the free speech issues involved in regulating campaign spending, while admittedly very inconvenient for all of us, are real, and no appeal to plutocracy extinguishes them.

Certainly: the approach Sanders seems to take to this problem, of literally amending the Constitution to neuter to First Amendment and then delegating to Congress --- yes, this Congress --- an unlimited power to regulate political speech, is not OK with me.

There are lots of reforms I want to see happen at the federal level. Sentencing reform, accountability for prosecutors, financial markets regulation, health care, school funding, health care, drug decriminalization, and health care are all I think good targets for top down federal regulation. Campaign finance, I think, might be a better thing for states to grapple with first.

You're right that there isn't a lot of evidence about whether money influences elections. But ultimately it doesn't matter whether money influences elections. What is more important is whether elected officials believe money is influential in elections, and I think this is trivially true.

What are your fears if "The Democracy is for People Amendment" passed? Are you worried that the congress would limit political spending too much? Or are you worried that the amendment doesn't specifically separate political spending from political speech well enough?

It doesn't separate political spending from political speech at all.

I read this as specifically giving congress the authority to set limits on raising and spending money. I don't see any language granting them to ability to restrict political speech.

SECTION 1.To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.

[0] - https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint-re...

The only thing it authorizes is limits on "the raising and spending of money ... to influence elections", it doesn't address speech as distinct from raising and spending money at all. So it seems to separate them quite distinctly.

Because regulating speech could never end badly...

Yeah, exactly. Even if they try to limit it from US corporations, couldn't a multi-national or seemingly separate foreign company just start advertising online?

Then you have to deal with regulating the internet. And, we don't want that because it opens the door to individuals' voices being censored too.

What a can of worms. I'm glad I'm just a programmer.

It's important when discussing topics like this to note that as long as the Republicans control all/part of Congress Sanders has absolutely no chance of getting this plan passed if he becomes President. In terms of what they could actually get done there is very little difference between Sanders and Hillary.

That's totally fair. I'm interested in hearing the proposed solutions of the most viable candidates because I feel they've probably given it the most real thought.

I also think we do should not leave the entire decision to them without further discussion simply because we trust they have a solid plan. We should seek to understand that plan.

I think we as a people need to revisit and discuss the topic of freedom of speech and campaign finance reform given today's climate of large corporate spending. Either a) businesses have figured out how to take advantage of the system in new ways, or b) the public is now waking up to the fact that this is happening and has always happened.

Regardless of whether a) or b) is true, we need to understand this topic and contribute towards an informed decision about it. The first amendment is too important to allow the solution to only come from selected politicians and academics. We need more open discussion, in my opinion, and since Lessig is pushing the issue, let's take advantage of that and support him.

The best and only constitutional solution is to publicly fund all federal elections. 2 billion a year could fully fund all congressional elections. You don't even need to fund the presidential election because the two parties raise more than enough money themselves. They are already buying literally all the commercial time on TV in swing states. More money doesn't provide much marginal benefit at that stage.

That wouldn't prevent companies from funding PACs, but it would greatly reduce their influence.

I'm not overly familiar with Lessig, but I believe he proposed the public funding option on a RealTime with Bill Mayer.

I'd also increase individual donation limits. Upper Middle Class people throwing 20k to a campaign for shits and giggles doesn't carry the same sort of risk as Boeing giving 500k and then asking for a defense contract.

Okay, I've heard that, but then how do we decide who gets to run? Wouldn't the wealthiest still end up with the best initial campaigns?

[side-rant]

This makes me think that being able to include more candidates, by way of reforming FPTP and using an alternative vote, could be as important as campaign finance reform.

I am over this two party system that controls everything. They're corrupting our democracy by gerrymandering and barring candidates from debates. And since they control the rules about how primaries work, and we really only have these two parties as a result of FPTP, we effectively do not have the democracy our founders tried to promise. The rules that protect democracy at the national level are not operating at the primary level.

[/side-rant]

You're absolutely right. That's why Lessig's proposed Citizen Equality Act has multi-member districts with ranked choice voting (effectively ending gerrymandering) as the second major component: https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/

That sounds great. Is he friends with someone who holds office and can make it happen? Say, Warren?

However it goes, I hope we continue to raise awareness and rally support for these reforms. That simple image that shows how gerrymandering works is a real eye opener, for example. And all politicians are guilty for being complicit in that behavior, unless I'm misinformed and there's some legitimate reason for redrawing district lines.

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