Saturday, November 20, 2004
Kristof's bright idea: We don't often agree with Nicholas Kristof, but in today's NYTimes Op-Ed about reforming the electoral process he says something we've been harping about for years: Funnel campaign donations through a blind trust. The funkiest idea in politics is to make donations anonymous even to the recipient. Citizens would make contributions through a blind trust, so that candidates wouldn't know to whom they were beholden.
If officials don't know who their major contributors are, they can't invite them to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom or write tax loopholes. A donor might boast about having made a contribution, but special interests will realize they can save money by telling politicians that they have donated when they haven't, and then politicians will doubt these boasts.
Such a system of shielding names of donors exists in 10 states, to some degree, for judicial candidates. A provocative book by Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres, "Voting With Dollars," makes an excellent case that the system be applied more broadly, but we need some innovative state (Oregon, do you hear that?) to take the leap.
Chile is a nice role model. While the U.S. was finishing campaigns that were another embarrassing roll in the hay for politicians and lobbyists, Chile was holding its first elections using a new law with a blind trust for campaign donations of more than $500. Patricio Navia, a Chilean elections specialist at New York University, says the system has loopholes but is a big improvement.
"It's a clever idea," he said. "It's a promising way of separating special interests and politicians." As far as the problem of donors informing the politician about the money they've given, we think laws similar to those about insider trading and other disclosure rules for the stock market would be effective, and make the Blind Trust model work.
posted by Quiddity at 11/20/2004 10:03:00 AM
6 comments
Ya know, I think this is actually a really really good idea.
Of course it would be better to force *all* political donations into a blind trust and have them distributed equally to all candidates.
However, this is America and we just don't do that kind of reform.
Rob
http://robfindlay.org
hmm, so we invite the honorable chairman of such and such a committee that oversees our special area of interest to give a speech on the subject. we praise him and say how much we think of him. our ceo also gives a speech talking about what we see as the future of our industry and things that the government should be sponsoring to help us. the next day an anonymous contribution of an extremely large amount lands in the senator's war chest. he of course has no way of figuring out what organization made the donation or whom he might be beholden to.
obviously contrived but if the communication of such matters becomes circumscribed by law, which by the way we know will never happen, they will just go ahead and establish elaborate protocols so as to communicate it anyway.
Analyzing the pattern of high-profile appearance at MegaCorp, Inc. followed by large donation from, oh, gee, who-knows-who could be made more difficult.
The trust could, for example, randomize the amounts paid out each week to the candidate -- maybe by rolling the dice to determine the percentage of the current stack to be paid out this week. (Probably a mechanism full of information holes, but someone smart could substitute a better one.)
I'm not sure this is really a workable solution.
I've often proposed giving registered voters $100 each in "vouchers" to give to the political candidate(s) of their choosing. This way, the amount of money needed from corporations and the wealthy to offset the money of the people would be considerably greater. It would essentially pour about $10 billion dollars into campaigns.
I call it the "buy back your government" plan, because you'd be using your own tax dollars to buy your congressman back from the special interests.
There seem to be potential ways to get around it, but it strikes me as a great idea.
People have made numerous comments about how Hollywood people give to political campaigns and how they're so naive and how only "serious" people should give to campaigns and how their harmful influence does so much damage, etc., etc.
Someone made the comment that Hollywood money is about as pure as one can get. A movie star will give to a cause because she believes in it or because he expects that people he doesn't personally know will benefit.
The usual political donor will give because they expect something for it. They want Acme Widgets Inc to receive a tax break or favorable treatment. They have zero interest in the general public good. If a contribution to a candidate will cause terrible harm to American society, but their stock price will go up 1/10th of a cent, they won't hesitate a moment to make that contribution.
Maskinng contributions behind anonynimity sounds like a marvelous way to reduce corporate influence on campaigns!
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