Campaign Finance Reform: A New Paradigm

From out of the primordial soup of policy ideas comes a great idea that goes against the current paradigm for campaign finance reform. Instead of full disclosure of all political donations, full anonymity. This is an idea that used to earn me a lot of blank stares when I brought it up in water-cooler political discussions. At the time, I thought it was my original idea. (That may be why I’m so fond of it.)

As it turns out, about the same time that I was discussing it, Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayers were publishing the idea in book form, “Voting with Dollars: A New Paradigm for Campaign Finance”. They call it the “secret donor booth”. In the book, they couple anonymous donation with a citizen directed public financing scheme called Patriot dollars. The Patriot scheme provides each registered voter with the power to direct anonymously up to 50 government dollars to the federal candidate of their choice. The anonymity serves to prevent possibility of campaigns corruptly purchasing these dollars at a discount. The secret donor booth allows citizens to contribute their own funds anonymously. Generally Ackermann and Ayers would prohibit contributions outside of this secret channel. (For more discussion of their ideas see the links on Ayers’ site particularly the new paradigm revisited)

The current paradigm attempts to deal with the corrupting influence of political contributions by bringing full transparency to all such transactions. At least you will know whose pocket Senator Iam Forsale is in (for whatever good this does.) The current paradigm also tries to limit the size of individual contributions (thus creating an industry for those skilled making end runs around the law.)

The new paradigm (or at least my version of it) is based on the idea that giving money to candidates whose ideas you agree with is appropriate. However, giving money to candidates so that they will support your ideas is textbook corruption. With anonymous giving, the candidate will not know who donated what, so she can’t return the favor. Anyone can claim to have made a large donation but no one can prove it. The purpose of donating would become helping to elect people with good ideas rather than those folks whose ideas can be shaped by money. The donations would no longer purchase either access or influence.

Ackermann and Ayer are more suspicious of large private donations. They seek to democratize giving. They feel that the Patriot scheme, though expensive, would reduce the extent of special interest influence and increase civic involvement by citizens. I agree. It would be great to have some State give this paradigm a trial run.