So the other day I went and saw this speaker from Bhutan on campus. If you don’t know where Bhutan is, that is probably because it is a tiny little country smushed between china and India, and if you don’t know where they are.. then, I really can’t help you. Anyway, one of the things that this guy had said was that Bhutan has publicly funded elections. The talk wasn’t about this, but it happened to come up and I thought it was really interesting. So, for today’s post, I want to talk about campaign finance reform.
The idea of publicly funded elections is not a new one- it has been brought up many times, and there is even a bill for it. But, Ill get to this later.
Bhutan… Pretty right??
First, how it works now: Right now in the US politically parties are privately funded. This means that money needed for a candidate to win an election is collected through donations either by the party itself, corporations, individuals, or other organizations. This is where it starts to get fishy because one could say hey, then doesn’t the richest party or the party that has policies that favor rich people always win? So, to combat this, there are laws in place that limit the amount of money an individual or firm can give and for corporations, they have to disclose who they give money to. The controversy lies in the fact that people say that these laws are not enough, they don’t work, and the richer party still has the one-up; and in some cases, they have a valid point notice that the Green Party rarely wins elections… they do not have a huge donor base, and not a lot of finding for their candidates. Now, obviously money isn’t the only factor in a party’s success, but it is a big one.
Now, back to publicly funded elections. One of the suggestions for campaign finance reform is to have the government primarily fund candidates and only allow very minuscule amounts of donation from individuals. This completely circumvents the issue of wealth in an election, but the big issue here is big government and more government spending. Funding a program like this would just add to the government budget deficit and overall debt.
In 2011 there was a bill introduced in the senate S 750 called the fair elections now act. This bill was to reform financing senate elections and to make them partially publicly funded. The bill would only allow monetary donations to campaigns of $ 100 or less and once a candidate received $1500 of in state private funding, they could apply and receive public funding for the remainder of the campaign. After being introduced, the bill was referred to the senate committee on Finance, and pigeonholed from there (as far as we know). I think this bill could be a really good indicator of whether publicly funded elections could work in the US. But, of course it would have to make it out of committee first, and unfortunately, Senator Menendez is a cosponsor, so… Who knows.
Just a thought..
Here is some info on the bill:
I really didn’t know too much about this controversy before reading your post. Thanks for the info. I can see why publicly funded elections might make sense: it may ensure more fairness. However, I can also see why this is a negative strategy. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Oops, sorry for the wrong name!
Hey Liz
,
I think publicly funded elections are one of the most debated topics under politics and other than some of the flaws that might be existing with this kind of elections, the country seems lawless in that picture. Thanks for sharing.
Anirudh
Hey Erin,
I think publicly funded elections are one of the most debated topics under politics and other than some of the flaws that might be existing with this kind of elections, the country seems lawless in that picture. Thanks for sharing.
Anirudh