If you can’t vote in it, you can’t donate in it.

What? That’s not simple enough? Okay, okay, so I’ll explain.

Those of you who didn’t get to live through the 1980’s (condolences) probably don’t remember the last heyday of campaign finance reform. Back then the idea was to prevent under the table deals and big donors giving big amounts directly to little candidates in little ponds. So we enacted a bunch of legislation starting in the Seventies and ended up with the present mess.

At the risk of offending libertarians, buying elections is not free speech. Nor is donating ridiculous amounts of money to candidates you literally cannot vote for because you don’t even live in their district. That’s thinly veiled corruption, not free speech.

The right to free speech doesn’t give you the right to monopolize by buying all the presses – or social media sites. I agree with the basic idea that you should be able to give to any candidate you see fit but having the right to speak your mind isn’t at all the same thing as having the right to own all the megaphones – or candidates.

So I also agree with the US Supreme Court that it is not an infringement of free speech to limit campaign donations to a particular level.

Here’s where I get off the train, however. I see no reason why Political Action Committees (PACs) should a) exist and b) be able to move funds between campaigns with next to no transparency. PACs, for you young ‘uns, exist to run an end run around the existing campaign financing laws. Now, you’ll get an earful of why they should exist and how helpful they are to candidates from PACs, political parties and candidates alike and some of it was even true twenty years ago. But last I looked crowdfunding is a thing. Why do we need PACs to launder huge amounts of campaign funding?

We don’t.

In my estimation, we also should not allow direct funding of candidates by donors who are not registered voters in the district they are donating in. Yes, that means people moving in just before an election will have their donation’s effect somewhat blunted but that’s only a tiny percentage of voters and a small number of times it can happen to a given person. Besides, the campaign probably still needs the money so other than those with kingmaker delusions I don’t think very many will feel harmed by having to wait.

And they can donate where they are registered so even the delusional get to play.

I see no reason to not permit donations to political parties and parties being allowed (with strict and immediate transparency) to fund election campaigns. BUT not primary campaigns. Parties aren’t supposed to control who wins a primary, that’s for party members to decide. So no funding primary campaigns unless absolutely every candidate that runs for a given office gets the exact same funding.

Yes, I know that would pretty much wreck party finances. It could be done by setting aside funds for primaries and dividing that but in highly contested races that money would be divided down to nothing. And being reasonable, Bob’s mayoral campaign shouldn’t get as much as Bob’s state senate campaign – no one said this would be simple. But primaries are where candidates for the general election are chosen. Many think this isn’t important when it is in fact crucial.

Wealthy people, corporations and others who have no direct connection to the district should not be allowed to fund candidates in that district. They are free to fund parties that fund those candidates; they should not be free to donate to people for whom they cannot legally vote. And parties should be strictly limited in how they distribute those funds.

For example, in the general election, Bill Gates can donate to the limit in all the races in his district but not in other districts, counties, cities, or states. Countries stupid enough to allow him or any other foreign national to donate in their elections are on their own. He can donate to the limit to his preferred political party (probably the Purple Haired Greens by the time we get any of this passed into law) but not to any other organization that will then donate to either parties or campaigns.

That’s right, I said any. Corporations being persons is a useful legal fiction but corporations, businesses, NGOs, PACs, charities and foreign governments to name a few ARE NOT VOTERS let alone human beings. If you can’t breathe or legally vote in a given election you have no business funding candidates in that election. Period.

If you want to influence voters, buy ads UNDER YOUR COMPANY NAME. No more ‘paid for by the committee to sound good to voters but really just three clowns with some cash’, if you as a person or organization want to influence voters then you do it under your own name. If your company has multiple subsidies, you name the donor and the owner, if need be, all the shell companies too.

Y’all are reading a blog, listening to a podcast or watching a video right now. I know full well you know what the Internet is. What would have been a major nuisance thirty years ago is child’s play today. If Mr. CEO wants to donate as a company then the company will be setting up a website for disclosure and it WILL be linked to all the company’s donations. If Company X doesn’t want people knowing that it donates to every candidate in the hopes of influencing them later down the line, then Company X doesn’t donate. Simple.

Government is not supposed to be for sale. It’s past time we made that a reality.