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Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

It's changed so much since Carter's day:

>Carter compared elections now-a-days to those when he was running for office, saying, “In those days when I ran against Gerald Ford, who was incumbent president or later Ronald Reagan, who challenged me, we didn’t raise a single penny to finance our campaign to run against each other. We just used the $1 per person checkoff that every taxpayer indicates at the end of his or her income tax return."

Guess things could be changed back?

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In Canada we used to have something called the "Per Vote Subsidy".

Every political party got $2 of taxpayer money per-vote, per year.

It was, sadly, killed by the Conservative government (along with corporate donors) to prioritize an individual-fundraising-oriented system like you have in the USA.

> In Canada we used to have something called the "Per Vote Subsidy". Every political party got $2 of taxpayer money per-vote, per year.

We have that in the US as well. It has existed since Watergate (1976). In 2008, Obama became the first candidate to opt out of the system, despite an earlier pledge to use them (McCain, his opponent, did not - he used public funds).

Amusingly, Romney said that he'd prefer to use public funds, but the reason that he did not (in 2012) is that Obama did not, and he believed he couldn't be competitive against an incumbent president who would potentially be spending three times as much as he would be legally permitted to[0][1][2].

The system still exists, for any candidate willing to use it. Though I would not be surprised if McCain became the last candidate to take advantage of it. After 2008, no candidate who wants to be competitive will take public funds if their opponent isn't as well, and that's unlikely to be the case for both candidates in a race simultaneously.

[0] Accepting public funds comes with limits on total spending

[1] http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-now/2012/08/romney-ab...

[2] And frankly, he was right - ultimately, he spent about the same amount as Obama did. If he'd been limited to the amounts that public financing would have restricted him to, he'd have lost in a landslide.

Is the money/opt-out party-wide or is it tied to a specific candidate for a specific office. When you say "Obama" and "Romney" are you talking about them in their role as leading the entire party in the election or just their individual presidential runs?

> Is the money/opt-out party-wide or is it tied to a specific candidate for a specific office. When you say "Obama" and "Romney" are you talking about them in their role as leading the entire party in the election or just their individual presidential runs?

It's for the candidate in the presidential race. Though that comparison makes less sense between the US and Canada, since the latter has a parliamentary system, which the US does not. Both the US and Canada have political parties, but the nature of the roles of political parties are very different, in terms of how they interact with the system.

If the US did what you're suggesting (provide money to parties, not to candidates from the two leading parties), it would have a very different effect. One could make the argument that it would be better, but it wouldn't really be the same as Canada doing it, because the political systems in which those policies exist are very different.

I remember my co-workers at the time thought that it was a brilliant move that Obama opted-out and defeated Mccain because he wasn’t limited by funds.

Now that we have Republican candidates using this to their full advantage, it needs to be stopped.

It needs to be stopped not because it's a different party, but because of who is donating the money. In the Obama campaign his fundraising records were set by small, individual donors. The GOP on the other hand is using a few mega donors (along with candidates like Clinton). This kind of unlimited funding from a couple hundred people is what should scare every democracy-loving person.

Edit: I write this as a nominal Clinton supporter here, so I really feel my opinion is unbiassd here.

> It needs to be stopped not because it's a different party, but because of who is donating the money. In the Obama campaign his fundraising records were set by small, individual donors The GOP on the other hand is using a few mega donors (along with candidates like Clinton)

It's not so simple.

First of all, it's hard for us to accurately compare 2008 and 2016, because there's a lot of data about the 2016 race that won't be released for a while. On top of that, the way data is broken down has changed, so not all of the buckets are 1-1 comparable. That said, most (53%) of Obama's money came from donations of over $200, and almost a third (27%) came from donations of $2,300 or more.[0]. In January, 95% of Clinton's money came from donors under $100.

You can say that we need to look at PACs as well. But actually, most PACs are still limited in the amount of money they can accept per person as well. It's only independent-expenditure-only committees that can take unlimited contributions. Even then, you'd be surprised how little money they actually raise. For example, only 25% of pro-Clinton money went to PACs, and that's counting all PACs, including ones subject to contribution limits[2].

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by 'candidates like Clinton' - in the presidential race, there's only one candidate who's not in the GOP and not Clinton. Is that meant to be a comment about Sanders?

[0] http://www.factcheck.org/2008/07/average-campaign-contributi...

[1] http://time.com/4208386/hillary-clinton-fundraising-bernie-s...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/electio...

"It needs to be stopped not because it's a different party, but because of who is donating the money. In the Obama campaign his fundraising records were set by small, individual donors. The GOP on the other hand is using a few mega donors (along with candidates like Clinton)."

So, the Democratic Party then too?

It's not enough to control the funding, you have to control the political speech. Basically, candidates would get fixed slots of tv and radio time to spread their message, and all other political speech would be forbidden. Otherwise money can dominate the conversation as it does with the pacs. However, such a thing could never be done in the US due to the core belief that free speech is a fundamental right that cannot be curtailed.

> It's not enough to control the funding, you have to control the political speech. Basically, candidates would get fixed slots of tv and radio time to spread their message, and all other political speech would be forbidden. Otherwise money can dominate the conversation as it does with the pacs.

So you would prevent candidates from tweeting, or posting on Reddit, or updating their personal blog?

Hmm. Carter may be telling the truth as he knows it - but Robert Caro's biographies of LBJ make it quite clear that there has been enormous monetary corruption in US politics - going back to well before LBJ. See especially how his first senate race was financed in "The Path to Power"

Forget monetary corruption: it was flat out political corruption. If anything the insurgent candidacies of Sanders and Trump show that being able to get media attention, raise money directly from the people, and in the case of Cruz (who is by no means a party favorite), raising money through super pacs, etc. Are a de-corrupting influence by opening up options outside of the anointed choices.

You mean "Landslide Lyndon"? That was overt and egregious ballot box mismanagement. Common as dirt in Texas politics.

Political contributions work more like "rock and roll fantasy camps" than they buy access. Not always; sometimes they do, but the candidate will usually not have the bandwidth to give you their undivided attention.

It's worth reading the book. Ballot box mismanagement, especially on that scale isn't free - and it seems quite clear that he was not only receiving cash handouts for his own campaign, but he was also acting as a channel for money to other democrats campaigns - and this was what allowed him to gain the influence he held within the party and especially the senate.

Oh, absolutely. It's a master work. I did not mean to cast aspersions on Mr. Caro's work.

We could certainly do even better nowadays. Rather than get campaign funds from taxpayers, we could have the state run a web service for candidates to debate, posit positions, etc. You would need to expand library computer access to let those without technology access the information, but the status quo is already bad enough its an improvement all around.

Then you abolish private campaign funding and advertising.

With the Citizens United decision, that's no longer possible without either a Constitutional Amendment or the Supreme Court overturning their own decision - neither one is very likely.

With Scalia gone you still think it's unlikely?

Regardless of the ideology of the court majority, they very rarely directly overturn previous decisions. It's not impossible (Brown vs. Board of Education) but it isn't just a matter of getting a challenge before a liberal court. The previous decision is binding, they would have to justify why they would be going against authority equal to their own.

I don't claim to understand SCOTUS - but they are extremely conservative institution. I mean dictionary definition of conservative - upholding the status quo. And they prefer to not get involved in the day to day affairs of the country.

So even a bad SCOTUS decision could stay on the books for a long time - just to save face and uphold the credibility of the institution.

They look to rock the boat the least. Even in their current hyperpartisan state.

Saying that the Court upholds precedent to "save face" shows an complete and total lack of understanding of the body.

With the Senate refusing to do its constitutional duty and confirm Obama's (very conservative) pick, it'll depend on who wins the presidential election. If it's Trump it'll probably be someone from left field completely unpredictable. With Hillary it'll probably be a middle of the road jurist not really willing to overturn things too much.

Or if Bernie wins, it might be someone left of Ginsberg...

> With the Citizens United decision, that's no longer possible without either a Constitutional Amendment or the Supreme Court overturning their own decision - neither one is very likely.

Citizens United has implications for campaign finance, but the demise of publicly financed campaigns that GP is referring to began before that.

In fact, it began with Obama's first election (2008), in which McCain agreed to take public financing. Obama, on the other hand, broke his earlier promise to take public funds, becoming the first candidate in history to do so[0][1]. Because accepting public financing means limiting total spending, Obama vastly outspent McCain by November. Obama won the popular vote, spending $10.94/vote, whereas McCain spent only half as much total money (amounting to $5.97/vote in the end.)[2]

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/politics/20obamacnd.htm...

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/politics/20obama.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_for_the_2008_Unite...

Though with Trump the favourite to be the Republican candidate we could see a Dem landslide which might allow something to be done.

The partisan composition of Congress will not have any immediate (or even short-term) effects on SCOTUS rulings.

I don't imagine that the primary campaigns were funded by public money - and in the case of the presidency, they are just as important as the actual campaign.

Actually, many primary campaigns were funded by public money. There was an interesting episode of Planet Money recently [0] where they talked to Senator Fred Harris who got the US system started. A few years after getting it going, he used public funds to run against Jimmy Carter for the 1976 nomination by the Democrats. He lost to Carter and then Carter used public funds to run his presidential campaign against Ford. But Harris got ~$600,000.00 to run his nomination campaign.

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/25/471905383/episo...

It's really surprising how often something trends on HN and there's a relevant Planet Money episode from within the last few weeks. I wonder if that's because in some cases other news outlets are spurred into covering it because of Planet Money (it's reach is relatively small compared to the Guardian, so the Guardian covering the topic will be seen as new to most), or if there's some journalistic social network (in the traditional sense, not the Facebook sense) that some outlets are better are responding to quickly than others?

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