representation

(You might want to read the earlier posting on 'Proprietarianism' before reading this.)

In the United States, political campaigns get paid for mostly by contributions. Contributions from associations, corporations, wealthy citizens, average citizens and poor citizens. Well, probably not much is actually contributed (relatively) from average and poor citizens, but they certainly represent the greatest majority of the voters.

Most political campaigns actually begin long before the popular portions of them become visible. Candidates must 'schmooze' the associations, corporations and wealthy citizens to ensure that the campaign 'warchest' will have sufficient contents to win the eventual election. Such schmoozing means that promises and allegiences are made to those entities to encourage them to contribute.

Associations, corporations and wealthy citizens often have interestes that are widely different from those of ordinary citizens. Yet current campaign financing practices give them an extraordinarily heavy influence on the outcome of elections and on the behavior of candidates once elected. It is through these avenues that money from foreign, sometimes unfriendly and sometimes even hostile sources can reach and influence elections in the United States.

Election after election in the United States has proven that the best funded candidate is the winning candidate. Most campaigns are begun on the premise that sufficient votes will come if enough funding can be gotten. That means campaign financing is as important to an election as the votes gathered from the electorate. It also means the candidates have alliegences to the campaign contributors and that elected officials spend a great deal of their time in office on the razor edge between pleasing contributors and pleasing voters.
Since the needs of contributors and voters are often widely different it ultimately means that most voters are not very well represented by the people they elect.

What can be done about it? Perhaps restricting political campaign contributions to registered voters would make it work better. I would also suggest restricting the amount each voter (candidate included) could contribute per candidate per campaign to some fraction of the annual average per capita income -- perhaps one fourth.

The US Supreme Court has defined political campaign contributions as a freedom of expression issue which makes restriction and regulation of contributions very difficult. However, the single greatest freedom of expression we have is the common vote. The US Constitution and the constitutions of each state of the Union provide in detail for the restriction and regulation of the that freedom of expression.

Because campaign contributions are so closly linked to the outcome of elections and because those contributions can determine the allegiences of the candidates after they are elected to office, a constitutional amendment restricting campaign contributions to registered voters is in order. In this way most citizens (voters) would at least have the possibility of being fairly and fully represented in their government. It would eleminate the concern that the wealthy and powerful control a government that is supposedly "of the people, by the people and for the people."

An added benefit is that the money available for political campaigns would likely be less than is available now. The effect of that should be shorter, more sharply focused campaigns -- and that could help bring honor to our nation.