Difference between revisions of "2010/06/21 Buz Mills and Clean Elections"

Revision as of 17:38, 21 June 2010

Buz Mills wants to violate citizens' choice for clean election contributions

I received in the mail today an advertisement from Buz Mills's Arizona Governor campaign, and this part of the brochure caught my eye:

And I got to thinking, where did that money come from? From this part of the 140 income tax form, of course:

Notice how it's a voluntary gift? Alongside various kinds of political and charitable contributions that you can make on your tax form. So enough people believe in this Clean Election Fund that there is $32 million available for campaigns, and he wants to just grab that money and re-use it for general budgetary obligations, and further he wants us to feel good about that? What is he thinking?!?!

Personally I've never given money to that fund because I'm not so naive as to think that throwing money in the right direction will give us clean elections. But I respect the wishes of those who have given their money to it, and Buz apparently does not. He just sees some low-hanging fruit, apparently.

Besides, the existence of the Clean Elections Fund is due to a ballot initiative. Arizonans put it on the ballot, Arizonans (narrowly) voted for it, then Arizonans contributed their own money, and now he thinks it can be used to pay for something else.

Here's some more debunking of related false statements from Buz. If his campaign is that sleazy, watch out... he's learned how to be a politician even without the years of political experience he's accusing his opponents of having too much of.

Clean elections funding in general

So apparently the theory is that people who want to run for public office and aren't already rich, or don't succeed in getting a lot of big-money backing, should still be able to run competitive campaigns. If you squint just right it sortof makes sense. It's a little strange that first, to qualify, such people have to collect a quota of small contributions ($5 each typically) then they must abruptly stop taking those contributions in order to qualify for the public money. But actually it's not regular public money, it's just a special fund consisting of voluntary contributions. The rules are strange. Wouldn't it be equivalent to have a non-government non-profit org which collects and distributes the campaign funds? It would probably be less successful in comparison to the ease of diverting part of your income tax refund to the state CE fund, I guess. But it would be a "fairer" way to achieve the same goal.

The tax credit provided if you have made a contribution is an Arizona tax revenue loss. But at least it's on equal footing with other political and charitable contributions. On the other hand the federal presidential campaign fund seems to be a double whammy, because if you check the box to give $3 to that, two things happen: your tax is reduced by $3 and the government sets aside an additional $3 to the campaign fund. (Unless I'm misunderstanding something.)

Anyway, wikipedia says it doesn't seem to be an effective way to increase fairness of the elections, in practice. This reminds me of the proverb that the best leaders are not those who seek power but those who are thrust into it by popular acclaim (yes it's a paraphrase). Our way of doing elections rewards those who want the position enough to spend a lot of money on campaigning (regardless where the money came from, the same type of go-getter people are doing the campaigning). So we're biased towards people who have ulterior motives rather than true public servants. Campaign reform as we've known it doesn't even touch that issue.

Another thing: we're living in the age of the Internet, in which I can communicate with any of my friends, or write up a web page accessible to anyone in the world (and wonder whether it will get noticed or not), at zero incremental cost (I just have to be connected). Yet politicians still think they need to spend millions on dead-tree advertisements and TV spots. And the tax credit for political contributions serves as an incentive to provide them the money to do it, too. It's so inefficient and obsolete. Maybe the next generation will make better use of grassroots campaigns. Even better, we need to think up a way to use the Internet to thrust smarter people into power rather than allowing power-hungry people to grab it.

Now that the Supreme Court has blocked Arizona's Clean Elections fund though (seems they consider it unconstitutional), I wonder what they think is supposed to happen to that money?!? Wanna bet it won't be diverted to other random obligations? By all rights it should be given back to those who made the contributions, or else given to a replacement, neutral campaign-finance organization. I really doubt it will be though. Everybody's corrupt. It will be entertaining to see whether that develops into a scandal this time around or just gets swept under the rug.

Conclusion

The whole Clean Election thing makes about as much sense as Daylight Saving Time (at least Arizona has spared us that one). Hopefully it disappears off next year's tax forms because $32m sure is a lot of money to be unsure what to do with... those optimistic souls who contributed aren't getting what they thought they were from it, in any case.

And don't vote for Buz, because he doesn't respect either your intelligence or the choices you've made with your money.

If you disagree, or have better ideas how to fix it, send me email or twitter @ec1oud.