Campaign Financing
First, I apologize for the length, but there is a lot of ground to cover.
The Campaign Financing problem in a nutshell is this:
Money is speech, speech is money, and when it comes to politics, the First Amendment protects them both. If Bill Gates thinks that I would make a great Senator, and if I had the energy to shuffle on down to the Registrar's Office to complete the necessary paperwork, then Bill Gates should be free to spend as much money as he wants trying to convince people to vote for me. If he can't, then it is not really a free country anymore, is it?
On the other hand, I think I know bribery when I see it, and I think I know improper influence when I see it, and I think I know a shakedown when I see it. And, I think I see all three. I also see a situation where even an honest politician has to wallow hip deep in questionable fund-raising practices simply to survive. I also see a situation where even legitimate fund-raising activity consumes a horrendous amount of an office holder's time and energy. That office holder works for me and I would prefer that she work for me full-time.
Is there a solution here? There better be or this essay is going nowhere.
Are taxpayer-financed campaigns the solution? Yes and No. Why yes? Yes, because with such a solution the person working for me, the office holder, could work for me closer to full time. Since he or she will remain a politician, there will still be a lot of time spent campaigning and schmoozing, but no time begging for money (or shaking people down for money). Yes, because the person working for me would no longer be accepting thousands and thousands of dollars of legalized bribes. Will all this mean the person working for me will do a better job? Pass better legislation? Maybe. I hope so. That would be the intended consequence. Another intended consequence is that the job might attract a better class of person. Could all this have the exact opposite unintended consequence? Absolutely. This should not be tried lightly. We should be fairly convinced that we have hit close to rock bottom under the status quo before trying it.
I'm ready to try it.
But I said yes and no, didn't I? Why no? No, because it won't work without tossing out the First Amendment and that would be a terrible thing. The official candidate's campaign can be bribed into refusing all contributions by giving the campaign tax money instead. But, what do you do when the NRA starts spending its own money on ads supporting candidate X? X swears he didn't ask the NRA to do this. X publicly (maybe even privately) asks the NRA to stop. They don't. And, to repeat myself, there is no Constitutional way to stop them.
No, because there is no principled way to decide who gets tax money and who doesn't. If only official party nominees get money, then what about primary elections? Campaign money raised and spent on primaries is just as corrupting as money raised and spent on general elections. If you include primaries, who gets the money? If the taxpayers will finance my campaign, I think I will run for Congress. After all, I have a lot of free time on my hands. In order for things to be fair, I insist that I get just as much money as all the other candidates. Sure, some may say that I am just a wing-nut, but who are they to say I am not a serious candidate. You want signatures? I can get signatures. I can hire some of those people that make a living collecting signatures. You like a matching-funds system? Why? It seems to me that all a matching-funds system does is give the $500 contributor $1000 worth of influence. This does not seem like progress to me.
And finally, no, because eliminating all money would be a bad thing. Even if all the practical and Constitutional problems were solved (and they can't be solved), I am convinced that the unintended consequences of taking away the political influence of money would be very bad. Under the status quo, populist demagogues need money to win, and the more dangerous they are to other people's money, the more money that flows to their opponents. This is a good thing.
So, what is it, yes, or no? The answer is both. As to incumbents: yes. As to challengers: no. Challengers don't work for me, but incumbents do. Challengers can't pass legislation. They may promise to pass legislation in the future, but once they win, once they are assured of tax-financed campaigns in the future, I cling to the hope that they won't stay bought.
Confused? Shouldn't be. It is simple. Two sets of rules: one for incumbents, one for challengers. Where is it written that challengers and incumbents have to compete under the same rules? The Constitution doesn't say so, and that is the only place that counts.
I'll admit that at first blush it offends one's basic sense of fairness. A baseball game would not be fair if the home team had different rules than the visiting team. But look at it this way: the team batting has different rules than the team fielding. In football, there are rules for defense, and rules for offense. There is nothing inherently unfair about two sets of rules. And, get this, this is important: given the natural advantages that come from being the incumbent, it is not inherently fair to have the same rules for incumbent and challenger. Incumbents might like to have you believe that, but that is because if you do, you give them the advantage.
The proper fairness test is not asking if the rules for incumbent and challenger are the same. The proper fairness test is to ask this question: if the challengers follow the rules for the challengers, and the incumbent follows the rules for the incumbent, is it a roughly fair election contest?
So what are these rules? For challengers: it is almost anything goes as far as campaign contributions. No limits. The only rules are reporting requirements. All contributions must be traceable. No cash, no gold or other items that can be exchanged for cash. Only checks, money orders, or credit cards that can be traced to someone. Someone real. No contributions though intermediaries except for PAC's. PAC money is fine as long as the PAC fully discloses where its money comes from, and where it goes. All contributions must be promptly reported. Very promptly. Contributions over $1000 must be reported 24 hours before the check is cashed. Contributions under $1000 must be reported one hour before the check is cashed. Reporting must be done by the Internet, with the media and the public having full instant access to the reported data. Heck, I would even permit foreign money. Would I vote for a candidate that took foreign money? Heck, no. But if the candidate took foreign money and fully reported it, I have no interest in throwing him or her in jail.
For incumbents: full taxpayer financing for the campaign. A free ride. Primaries, general election, the whole shebang. There is no need for matching funds or any other kind of screening test to weed out unserious candidates because, golly gee, it's the incumbent. It's the person who won last time. That is serious enough for me.
Can we force incumbents to do this? No. The First Amendment, remember? We persuade the incumbents in two ways. First, we buy them off by making the taxpayers pony enough to give them a nice campaign. Second, we shame them into it by voting against them if they turn it down. Why would they ever turn it down? Why would they ever turn down the opportunity to avoid all that creepy fund-raising stuff they say they hate so much? Because all the creepy fund-raising stuff they say they hate so much gives them lots and lots more money than what challengers can raise.
How much should the incumbent get from the taxpayers? I can't give you a number. I can give you two criteria. The incumbent would get the greater of these two amounts. The first criterion is simply a sum of money to run a decent, but not extravagant, campaign. It is not one size fits all. The figure for the incumbent Senator from California is going to be a lot higher than the figure for the incumbent Senator from Idaho. I don't know what that figure is, but it shouldn't be too hard to come up with one. It is not like we are designing a bridge. Close is close enough. The second criterion is easy. The second criterion is simply to match whatever money is spent by any single challenger. If the incumbent is unlucky enough to have Steve Forbes run against her, she is guaranteed to be able to match him dollar for dollar.
Great deal for the incumbent? If they were normal human beings who had a normal human distaste for begging for money, yes, absolutely. If they were political careerists who value incumbency mainly for its ability to shake down special interests for gobs of money so that they can outspend any challenger by 5 to 1, no, not really.
Bad deal for challengers? Depends on what you compare it to. Compared to the deal given incumbents, challengers have it rough. They have to bust their butt for money and no matter how hard they work at it, they can never get more money than the incumbent. Compared to the current plight of challengers, this is a great deal. No more being outspent 5 to 1. Plus, if the incumbents can't soak up all the money, there will be more available for challengers. Let's face it, to a certain extent, fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and lobbyists gotta make campaign contributions.
Is this a good or bad deal for lobbyists? It stinks. Like I mentioned before, even if they buy a challenger, how do they insure he stays bought? They can't. If lobbyists can't buy access, do they still get access? Imagine an incumbent telling some jerk lobbyist to go to hell. A nice thought. Today it never happens. If this is enacted, who knows?
I am not naive. The National Association of Manufacturers is still going to give big to Republican challengers and the AFL-CIO is still going to give big to Democratic challengers. In return, Republican incumbents are going to be nice to NAM lobbyists and Democratic incumbents are going to be nice to AFL-CIO lobbyists. But it wouldn't be the same. Excuse me while I talk 90's babble, but the human dynamics would be totally different.
What about independent expenditures, you ask? What about "issue ads" that really aren't issue ads? Can you stop them? No, no, no. Repeat after me: The First Amendment. Freedom of speech. So, if the incumbent is to get whatever the challenger gets, what should you do when someone "independently" spends $30,000 on a challenger, or, on an incumbent? What you should do is even the playing field ... kind of ... somewhat ... sort of. This is not computer chip manufacturing. Precision is not necessary. Challenger X ends up raising and spending one million dollars. If incumbent Y gets and spends anywhere between $800,000 and $1,200,000, then I say "close enough." Regardless of whether X or Y wins, the loser cannot say the decisive difference was money.
How do you even the playing field? I am sorry to have to do this, but I am about to propose creating a new government agency. It hurts, but I am going to do it anyway. Call the agency the Campaign Finance Commission. Put six commissioners on it. The Senate minority and majority leaders each appoint one, the House minority and majority leaders each appoint one, and the two Presidential candidates that got the highest vote totals in the previous election each appoint one. In other words: three Republicans and three Democrats. To ensure a minimal amount of bipartisan cooperation, it should take the vote of four commissioners in order to do anything.
All contributions are reported to this commission. All expenditures are reported to this commission. Instantly - via the internet. All independent expenditures, say, over $1000, must be instantly reported to this commission. Yes, the First Amendment will permit even independent expenditures to have a reporting requirement. Most of the time the commission would not do much. For the few weeks before the election, however, they would meet daily and make decisions about how much money each incumbent gets. That's it. That's all they do. In the sense of telling people what they can and cannot do, the commission does no regulation whatsoever. They just monitor what other people are freely doing, and then allocate money to incumbents accordingly. The NRA spends $20,000 running pro-incumbent ads, the incumbent's allotment is cut. The AFL-CIO spends $40,000 running anti-incumbent ads, the $40,000 is added to the challenger's ledger and the incumbent's allotment is adjusted accordingly.
If the system works properly, independent expenditures on behalf of incumbents should disappear, and monetary contributions to incumbents should disappear. Can supporters still support an incumbent? Absolutely! They can support the incumbent the old-fashioned way - they can volunteer. Donated labor to the incumbent would not result in any reduction of the taxpayer-funded portion of the campaign. Should either the incumbent or the challenger be able to attract significantly more volunteers to their campaign, then that is an advantage this system would not attempt to touch.
This is not just bookkeeping. This commission must bring a lot of judgment to the job. When is an issue ad really an issue ad and not just a disguised campaign ad? The commission must look at it and make the call. How much of an adjustment to the incumbent's budget should be made? Again, a judgment call. Some independent expenditures might be worthy of a straight dollar for dollar adjustment, some not. I repeat — precision is nice, but secondary. What is important is speed. Decisions made three weeks after the election are useless decisions. Given who appoints the commissioners, I am not worried that incumbents are going to get an unfair decision.
If you write down hard and fast rules and pretend that solves all problems, you are wrong. Never underestimate the ability of people to find loopholes. For instance, say you are a gazillionaire who wants to support incumbent X. You can't give X money because he has chosen taxpayer financing. If you spend a million bucks running ads for X, the commission may take a million away from X's allotted tax money. You read the fine print and decide to do the following: You take $200,000 and make the most expensively produced, but ineffective, ad ever made that says vote against X. Then you spend $800,000 and blanket the airways with this ineffective ad. You have this ad running on every channel, every 15 minutes, from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. every morning. Get it? X points to your expenditures against him and asks the commission for an extra million dollars. You can't write a rule to cover everything. You must give a commission some authority and tell them to use it wisely.
Another point about decisions of the commission: No appeals! Let us all hope that the commission makes no mistakes, but if they do, tough. Get over it. If they do something particularly stupid, either the incumbent or her challenger can ask the commission to re-consider. But, it is the commission itself that is re-considering. No courts, no judges, please! I would like to say no lawyers, but no doubt lawyers will be hired to argue cases in front of the commission. Assuming, of course, the commission holds hearings and lets people talk. They may choose not to, and that is fine with me. After all, with 478 elections to monitor, they will be pretty busy. (435 Representatives plus 33 or 34 Senators. This idea does not apply to Presidents.) However, given the number of safe seats, the vast majority of these 478 elections will take up very little of the Commission's time.
Oh, and this commission can meet in private if it wants to. The hearing, if any, should be public. All the staff reports and data the commission considers should be public. But, the commission itself can conduct deliberations in private, with no transcript or anything else recording what is said. In some ways sunshine is good. In some ways sunshine is bad. Group deliberations should not be in the sun. No one knows what is said in jury rooms, and that is good. No one knows what is said when the Supreme Court gets together to talk about cases and that is good. They are not cooking up some evil conspiracy, they are thinking out loud. Thinking out loud is a good thing. If you do it in private you won't be embarrassed by changing your mind. If you do it in private those who hear you can tell you that you are flat out wrong without embarrassing you. After deliberations, the final vote should be public. If one or more commissioner wishes to explain their vote, fine. But how much explanation to give is up to them.
Bottom line, if these commissioners have integrity, the system works. If they don't, well, if they don't then I suspect incumbents will probably get more tax money than they should. But even if that happens, we are still much better off than we are today. Today, incumbents outspend challengers 3, 4, or 5 to one, and the incumbents prostitute themselves to raise the money. Even a corrupt commission will keep an incumbent under a 2-to-one advantage, and the incumbent doesn't have to kiss a single butt in order to raise money.
So there it is. Other than reporting requirements, there is complete and absolute freedom for everyone except incumbents. For incumbents: a voluntary trade. They voluntarily give up their natural fund-raising advantages over any challenger. In return they gain their human dignity, they gain untold hours of time, and they are guaranteed enough money to at least match their highest spending challenger, dollar for dollar.
The First Amendment is happy, challengers should be happy, incumbents should be happy, and the public gains incumbents who are not bought.
C E Sutton
The Campaign Financing problem in a nutshell is this:
Money is speech, speech is money, and when it comes to politics, the First Amendment protects them both. If Bill Gates thinks that I would make a great Senator, and if I had the energy to shuffle on down to the Registrar's Office to complete the necessary paperwork, then Bill Gates should be free to spend as much money as he wants trying to convince people to vote for me. If he can't, then it is not really a free country anymore, is it?
On the other hand, I think I know bribery when I see it, and I think I know improper influence when I see it, and I think I know a shakedown when I see it. And, I think I see all three. I also see a situation where even an honest politician has to wallow hip deep in questionable fund-raising practices simply to survive. I also see a situation where even legitimate fund-raising activity consumes a horrendous amount of an office holder's time and energy. That office holder works for me and I would prefer that she work for me full-time.
Is there a solution here? There better be or this essay is going nowhere.
Are taxpayer-financed campaigns the solution? Yes and No. Why yes? Yes, because with such a solution the person working for me, the office holder, could work for me closer to full time. Since he or she will remain a politician, there will still be a lot of time spent campaigning and schmoozing, but no time begging for money (or shaking people down for money). Yes, because the person working for me would no longer be accepting thousands and thousands of dollars of legalized bribes. Will all this mean the person working for me will do a better job? Pass better legislation? Maybe. I hope so. That would be the intended consequence. Another intended consequence is that the job might attract a better class of person. Could all this have the exact opposite unintended consequence? Absolutely. This should not be tried lightly. We should be fairly convinced that we have hit close to rock bottom under the status quo before trying it.
I'm ready to try it.
But I said yes and no, didn't I? Why no? No, because it won't work without tossing out the First Amendment and that would be a terrible thing. The official candidate's campaign can be bribed into refusing all contributions by giving the campaign tax money instead. But, what do you do when the NRA starts spending its own money on ads supporting candidate X? X swears he didn't ask the NRA to do this. X publicly (maybe even privately) asks the NRA to stop. They don't. And, to repeat myself, there is no Constitutional way to stop them.
No, because there is no principled way to decide who gets tax money and who doesn't. If only official party nominees get money, then what about primary elections? Campaign money raised and spent on primaries is just as corrupting as money raised and spent on general elections. If you include primaries, who gets the money? If the taxpayers will finance my campaign, I think I will run for Congress. After all, I have a lot of free time on my hands. In order for things to be fair, I insist that I get just as much money as all the other candidates. Sure, some may say that I am just a wing-nut, but who are they to say I am not a serious candidate. You want signatures? I can get signatures. I can hire some of those people that make a living collecting signatures. You like a matching-funds system? Why? It seems to me that all a matching-funds system does is give the $500 contributor $1000 worth of influence. This does not seem like progress to me.
And finally, no, because eliminating all money would be a bad thing. Even if all the practical and Constitutional problems were solved (and they can't be solved), I am convinced that the unintended consequences of taking away the political influence of money would be very bad. Under the status quo, populist demagogues need money to win, and the more dangerous they are to other people's money, the more money that flows to their opponents. This is a good thing.
So, what is it, yes, or no? The answer is both. As to incumbents: yes. As to challengers: no. Challengers don't work for me, but incumbents do. Challengers can't pass legislation. They may promise to pass legislation in the future, but once they win, once they are assured of tax-financed campaigns in the future, I cling to the hope that they won't stay bought.
Confused? Shouldn't be. It is simple. Two sets of rules: one for incumbents, one for challengers. Where is it written that challengers and incumbents have to compete under the same rules? The Constitution doesn't say so, and that is the only place that counts.
I'll admit that at first blush it offends one's basic sense of fairness. A baseball game would not be fair if the home team had different rules than the visiting team. But look at it this way: the team batting has different rules than the team fielding. In football, there are rules for defense, and rules for offense. There is nothing inherently unfair about two sets of rules. And, get this, this is important: given the natural advantages that come from being the incumbent, it is not inherently fair to have the same rules for incumbent and challenger. Incumbents might like to have you believe that, but that is because if you do, you give them the advantage.
The proper fairness test is not asking if the rules for incumbent and challenger are the same. The proper fairness test is to ask this question: if the challengers follow the rules for the challengers, and the incumbent follows the rules for the incumbent, is it a roughly fair election contest?
So what are these rules? For challengers: it is almost anything goes as far as campaign contributions. No limits. The only rules are reporting requirements. All contributions must be traceable. No cash, no gold or other items that can be exchanged for cash. Only checks, money orders, or credit cards that can be traced to someone. Someone real. No contributions though intermediaries except for PAC's. PAC money is fine as long as the PAC fully discloses where its money comes from, and where it goes. All contributions must be promptly reported. Very promptly. Contributions over $1000 must be reported 24 hours before the check is cashed. Contributions under $1000 must be reported one hour before the check is cashed. Reporting must be done by the Internet, with the media and the public having full instant access to the reported data. Heck, I would even permit foreign money. Would I vote for a candidate that took foreign money? Heck, no. But if the candidate took foreign money and fully reported it, I have no interest in throwing him or her in jail.
For incumbents: full taxpayer financing for the campaign. A free ride. Primaries, general election, the whole shebang. There is no need for matching funds or any other kind of screening test to weed out unserious candidates because, golly gee, it's the incumbent. It's the person who won last time. That is serious enough for me.
Can we force incumbents to do this? No. The First Amendment, remember? We persuade the incumbents in two ways. First, we buy them off by making the taxpayers pony enough to give them a nice campaign. Second, we shame them into it by voting against them if they turn it down. Why would they ever turn it down? Why would they ever turn down the opportunity to avoid all that creepy fund-raising stuff they say they hate so much? Because all the creepy fund-raising stuff they say they hate so much gives them lots and lots more money than what challengers can raise.
How much should the incumbent get from the taxpayers? I can't give you a number. I can give you two criteria. The incumbent would get the greater of these two amounts. The first criterion is simply a sum of money to run a decent, but not extravagant, campaign. It is not one size fits all. The figure for the incumbent Senator from California is going to be a lot higher than the figure for the incumbent Senator from Idaho. I don't know what that figure is, but it shouldn't be too hard to come up with one. It is not like we are designing a bridge. Close is close enough. The second criterion is easy. The second criterion is simply to match whatever money is spent by any single challenger. If the incumbent is unlucky enough to have Steve Forbes run against her, she is guaranteed to be able to match him dollar for dollar.
Great deal for the incumbent? If they were normal human beings who had a normal human distaste for begging for money, yes, absolutely. If they were political careerists who value incumbency mainly for its ability to shake down special interests for gobs of money so that they can outspend any challenger by 5 to 1, no, not really.
Bad deal for challengers? Depends on what you compare it to. Compared to the deal given incumbents, challengers have it rough. They have to bust their butt for money and no matter how hard they work at it, they can never get more money than the incumbent. Compared to the current plight of challengers, this is a great deal. No more being outspent 5 to 1. Plus, if the incumbents can't soak up all the money, there will be more available for challengers. Let's face it, to a certain extent, fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and lobbyists gotta make campaign contributions.
Is this a good or bad deal for lobbyists? It stinks. Like I mentioned before, even if they buy a challenger, how do they insure he stays bought? They can't. If lobbyists can't buy access, do they still get access? Imagine an incumbent telling some jerk lobbyist to go to hell. A nice thought. Today it never happens. If this is enacted, who knows?
I am not naive. The National Association of Manufacturers is still going to give big to Republican challengers and the AFL-CIO is still going to give big to Democratic challengers. In return, Republican incumbents are going to be nice to NAM lobbyists and Democratic incumbents are going to be nice to AFL-CIO lobbyists. But it wouldn't be the same. Excuse me while I talk 90's babble, but the human dynamics would be totally different.
What about independent expenditures, you ask? What about "issue ads" that really aren't issue ads? Can you stop them? No, no, no. Repeat after me: The First Amendment. Freedom of speech. So, if the incumbent is to get whatever the challenger gets, what should you do when someone "independently" spends $30,000 on a challenger, or, on an incumbent? What you should do is even the playing field ... kind of ... somewhat ... sort of. This is not computer chip manufacturing. Precision is not necessary. Challenger X ends up raising and spending one million dollars. If incumbent Y gets and spends anywhere between $800,000 and $1,200,000, then I say "close enough." Regardless of whether X or Y wins, the loser cannot say the decisive difference was money.
How do you even the playing field? I am sorry to have to do this, but I am about to propose creating a new government agency. It hurts, but I am going to do it anyway. Call the agency the Campaign Finance Commission. Put six commissioners on it. The Senate minority and majority leaders each appoint one, the House minority and majority leaders each appoint one, and the two Presidential candidates that got the highest vote totals in the previous election each appoint one. In other words: three Republicans and three Democrats. To ensure a minimal amount of bipartisan cooperation, it should take the vote of four commissioners in order to do anything.
All contributions are reported to this commission. All expenditures are reported to this commission. Instantly - via the internet. All independent expenditures, say, over $1000, must be instantly reported to this commission. Yes, the First Amendment will permit even independent expenditures to have a reporting requirement. Most of the time the commission would not do much. For the few weeks before the election, however, they would meet daily and make decisions about how much money each incumbent gets. That's it. That's all they do. In the sense of telling people what they can and cannot do, the commission does no regulation whatsoever. They just monitor what other people are freely doing, and then allocate money to incumbents accordingly. The NRA spends $20,000 running pro-incumbent ads, the incumbent's allotment is cut. The AFL-CIO spends $40,000 running anti-incumbent ads, the $40,000 is added to the challenger's ledger and the incumbent's allotment is adjusted accordingly.
If the system works properly, independent expenditures on behalf of incumbents should disappear, and monetary contributions to incumbents should disappear. Can supporters still support an incumbent? Absolutely! They can support the incumbent the old-fashioned way - they can volunteer. Donated labor to the incumbent would not result in any reduction of the taxpayer-funded portion of the campaign. Should either the incumbent or the challenger be able to attract significantly more volunteers to their campaign, then that is an advantage this system would not attempt to touch.
This is not just bookkeeping. This commission must bring a lot of judgment to the job. When is an issue ad really an issue ad and not just a disguised campaign ad? The commission must look at it and make the call. How much of an adjustment to the incumbent's budget should be made? Again, a judgment call. Some independent expenditures might be worthy of a straight dollar for dollar adjustment, some not. I repeat — precision is nice, but secondary. What is important is speed. Decisions made three weeks after the election are useless decisions. Given who appoints the commissioners, I am not worried that incumbents are going to get an unfair decision.
If you write down hard and fast rules and pretend that solves all problems, you are wrong. Never underestimate the ability of people to find loopholes. For instance, say you are a gazillionaire who wants to support incumbent X. You can't give X money because he has chosen taxpayer financing. If you spend a million bucks running ads for X, the commission may take a million away from X's allotted tax money. You read the fine print and decide to do the following: You take $200,000 and make the most expensively produced, but ineffective, ad ever made that says vote against X. Then you spend $800,000 and blanket the airways with this ineffective ad. You have this ad running on every channel, every 15 minutes, from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. every morning. Get it? X points to your expenditures against him and asks the commission for an extra million dollars. You can't write a rule to cover everything. You must give a commission some authority and tell them to use it wisely.
Another point about decisions of the commission: No appeals! Let us all hope that the commission makes no mistakes, but if they do, tough. Get over it. If they do something particularly stupid, either the incumbent or her challenger can ask the commission to re-consider. But, it is the commission itself that is re-considering. No courts, no judges, please! I would like to say no lawyers, but no doubt lawyers will be hired to argue cases in front of the commission. Assuming, of course, the commission holds hearings and lets people talk. They may choose not to, and that is fine with me. After all, with 478 elections to monitor, they will be pretty busy. (435 Representatives plus 33 or 34 Senators. This idea does not apply to Presidents.) However, given the number of safe seats, the vast majority of these 478 elections will take up very little of the Commission's time.
Oh, and this commission can meet in private if it wants to. The hearing, if any, should be public. All the staff reports and data the commission considers should be public. But, the commission itself can conduct deliberations in private, with no transcript or anything else recording what is said. In some ways sunshine is good. In some ways sunshine is bad. Group deliberations should not be in the sun. No one knows what is said in jury rooms, and that is good. No one knows what is said when the Supreme Court gets together to talk about cases and that is good. They are not cooking up some evil conspiracy, they are thinking out loud. Thinking out loud is a good thing. If you do it in private you won't be embarrassed by changing your mind. If you do it in private those who hear you can tell you that you are flat out wrong without embarrassing you. After deliberations, the final vote should be public. If one or more commissioner wishes to explain their vote, fine. But how much explanation to give is up to them.
Bottom line, if these commissioners have integrity, the system works. If they don't, well, if they don't then I suspect incumbents will probably get more tax money than they should. But even if that happens, we are still much better off than we are today. Today, incumbents outspend challengers 3, 4, or 5 to one, and the incumbents prostitute themselves to raise the money. Even a corrupt commission will keep an incumbent under a 2-to-one advantage, and the incumbent doesn't have to kiss a single butt in order to raise money.
So there it is. Other than reporting requirements, there is complete and absolute freedom for everyone except incumbents. For incumbents: a voluntary trade. They voluntarily give up their natural fund-raising advantages over any challenger. In return they gain their human dignity, they gain untold hours of time, and they are guaranteed enough money to at least match their highest spending challenger, dollar for dollar.
The First Amendment is happy, challengers should be happy, incumbents should be happy, and the public gains incumbents who are not bought.
C E Sutton