Question of the day
Friday, Nov 18, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* From the Atlantic…
The private voting booth seems natural to today’s voters. But to bygone generations, casting one’s ballot publicly seemed the obvious approach. How could citizens trust the ultimate tally if they couldn’t monitor the individual inputs? Alas, transparency had an unintended consequence: it made vote-buying easy. If John Smith offered George Cooper a barrel of whiskey to vote for Sam Brown, he could verify that he was getting his money’s worth. Under a secret ballot, he could still offer the barrel of whiskey. But it made no sense: what incentive did George have to keep his word if he secretly supported another candidate? Vote buying became difficult.
In an intriguing paper published at Yale Law School more than a decade ago, Ian Ayres and Jeremy Bulow argued that the same logic applies to campaign contributions. Presently, our intuition is that transparency and disclosure are the best policies. But what if, like our counterparts in early America, we’re just enabling a kind of vote buying, whereby legislators know exactly who is bankrolling their campaigns, and skewer their behavior toward special interests as a result? What if less transparency would be as effective for us as it was for them? […]
There is an obvious objection. It was reasonably simple to implement a secret ballot. But campaign contributions? What if it proved impossible to actually keep their provenance secret? What’s to stop me from whispering to Joe Legislator, “You’re going to see $10,000 show up in your campaign account a week from now. It’s from me.” That would be the worst of all worlds: gone would be the transparency of the current system, and politicians would still know who to keep happy!
After studying the issue, however, Larry Lessig concludes in his essential book Republic, Lost that anonymity is in fact possible to maintain. Citing “Voting with Dollars: A New Paradigm for Campaign Finance” by Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres, he writes that “the two critical elements are, first, an anonymous donation booth, which takes in contributions and then divides those contributions into random amounts, which it then passes along to the candidates;” that solves the “expect this amount on this day” problem; “and two, the right to revoke any contribution once made. It is this second element that does most of the work: for even if you watched me make the contribution to your campaign, I would still have an opportunity to revoke that contribution the next day. Once again, you’re free to trust me when I say I haven’t revoked it. But just as with vote buying, the need for trust will severely weaken the market.” […]
Lessig points to one failed experiment of this sort. In Dade County, Florida, a blind trust was set up to fund judicial elections. “The funds were solicited from all practicing members of the bar in Dade County, and the funds were distributed on a pro-rata basis to each ‘qualified’ judicial candidate in the county,” he writes. “The trust failed soon after it was adopted due to (i) a lack of attorney participation (donations), and (ii) criticism that the fund distributed funds to all qualified judicial candidates, thereby disallowing attorneys from directing contributions to particular candidates.” That confounding variable is unfortunate. I’d be curious to know what would’ve happened if the anonymous donations could’ve been directed to particular candidates.
* The Question: What do you think of this idea to keep campaign contributions secret? Would it work here? Should it be tried on a limited basis? Explain.
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 12:59 pm:
I am for the complete opposite.
I would like to see complete unlimited campaign contributions for any candidate, at any time, for any office, from anyonw.
Now, here is the rub. If the contribution is larger than .01 cents, and that includes in-kind, it must be reported, AND if its a contribution, it must be from a Checking Account, (no cash) so it can be traced back to who controls the account.
You want participation, participate, but under COMPLETE sunshine, for an unlimitied amount.
Further, if it’s deemed a transfer of funds took place to “fill” a checking account to hide its origins, it is a felony.
You want to go “dirty money”, then go full bore!
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:03 pm:
Sorry, this would not work here, and should not be tried.
Why? Because the “lawyers” always know more than the regulators and this can be taken to the “n”th degree too easily. Hiding is an art, why promote it?
Further, why the heck would I want my money going somewhere I may not want, blindly or not?
- Robert - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:12 pm:
==Further, why the heck would I want my money going somewhere I may not want, blindly or not?==
I believe the money does go where you want under the proposal; the random amount part means that if you give $10,000, that $10,000 is divided up into random numbers that sum to $10,000 and is sent to the candidate as several random deposits, so he can’t tell it came from you.
- amalia - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:15 pm:
you know that song Solidarity forever? well my version of that for this is Transparency forever. more please, not less.
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:15 pm:
===I believe the money does go where you want under the proposal; the random amount part means that if you give $10,000, that $10,000 is divided up into random numbers that sum to $10,000 and is sent to the candidate as several random deposits, so he can’t tell it came from you.===
You know …this is Illinois. You want me to believe “accidents” are NOT going to happen where MY money happens to go somewhere else, and we all find out about it after someone I may NOT like gets my money and wins? If you want me to believe that won’t happen in Illinois …
I might be better randomly putting the money in a shoebox for candidates I like to find and use …
- Robert - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:16 pm:
Interesting idea, but I don’t see the blind trust working.
Nothing would prevent someone from showing a candidate his bank statement to prove his donation was made. Looking at this would show that the revoke option wasn’t utilized.
- Robert - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:17 pm:
==You know …this is Illinois. You want me to believe “accidents” are NOT going to happen where MY money happens to go somewhere else, and we all find out about it after someone I may NOT like gets my money and wins?==
LOL - I completely agree with you here. Another reason the blind trust wouldn’t work.
- Dirty Red - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:21 pm:
Willy touches on an interesting thought. I anonymously contribute to PAC A. That’s all I would know under this proposed system.
This idea should be killed with fire.
- Fed up - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:22 pm:
I don’t know I like knowing that the unions paid Quinn 50k for his no layoff pledge.
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:29 pm:
Here is how it would go in Illinois …
“Whatcha do is git me da cash, I put it in da account, let’s say 20 Grand, and den, da guy gets the 20 Gs, just he don’t know who gave it to ‘em. You got nuttin’ to worry ’bout. Git me da check, I deposit it, boom! All anonymous, like. And the beauty part, nutter guy regulates it so its legal and quiet”
Yikes!
- the Other Anonymous - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:30 pm:
Heh. I wrote a (very amateurish) paper in school suggesting this kind of idea. Of course, my paper was half-baked — but still, kind of funny.
Here’s the thing, though. Anonymous donations (and there are plenty of ways to make it work) address the problem of using campaign contributions as a surrogate for bribes. I.e., it addresses the problem of “pay-to-play” at its most literal level.
What anonymous contributions will not address, though, is the inordinate influence of money in elections and politics. If Exelon can contribute millions anonymously to defeat or elect a candidate, it will still have outsized influence on the process at the expense of ordinary, non-millionaire voters and businesses.
So it’s an intriguing idea that only addresses a part of the problem. But the cost of addressing that small part of the problem is worsening the other problem of giving big-money interests an outsized influence on electoral results.
- Cincinnatus - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:38 pm:
Instant and open disclosure of all campaign contributions which have no dollar amount limits. Candidates would not have to scrounge around for fundraising, and be able to devote more time to the job instead of attending nickel and dime events begging for enough money to run a modern campaign. Let the voters decide if the politician is being influenced.
- Anon - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:39 pm:
Would be fun to moneybomb a candidate then retract all the donations. What would happen if they had already spent the money?
- Ahoy - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:41 pm:
I don’t think the comparisons are good since one involves elections where votes are secret and the other is legislative votes that are open to the public. For a fair study, you would need to have the votes by legislators be kept secret as well.
Which is an interesting thought, if you don’t know who is voting for what. So, if we want campaign contributions secret, let’s have the votes taken by legislators a secret as well.
- KGB - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 1:51 pm:
No. What you need are campaign spending limits.
- J - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 2:16 pm:
One flaw this doesn’t address is that there is a record of a financial transfer, there is no record that ties an individual to a vote.
I can’t imagine it would be too hard for people to show copies of canceled checks.
- thechampaignlife - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 2:22 pm:
Interesting idea but the devil’s in the details and there’d have to be a ton of details to make it work. I’d rather see more effort put into a system that lowers the need to fund a campaign as much or at all. My utopian vote would be for sortition.
- Cincinnatus - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 2:24 pm:
thechampaignlife,
We already use sortition. Sortition of $.
- dupage dan - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 2:51 pm:
While intriguing it is, I think, ultimately unworkable. One issue that came to mind - what if a completely unsavory individual were to donate to a candidate? How can the candidate prevent cash from a truly despicable character coming into the campaign. I realize the candidate would be, essentially, blameless. Nonetheless it would be problematic.
- MeAgain - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 3:20 pm:
Shoot the Windy City has been keeping secret for years!
- Objective Dem - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 3:22 pm:
I think it is an interesting idea, but ultimately I think it is more important to limit the need for campaign contributions by providing free/reduced tv airtime to candidates.
The proposed approach would work if everyone had one “vote” or equal amounts of money to contribute. But clearly some people have access to both personal fortunes and their business/organization’s funds.
- Plutocrat03 - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 3:37 pm:
No. A complex solution to a problem with no hope of improving the situation.
I would lean towards a solution with the maximum amount of sunlight.
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 4:52 pm:
Its impossible to plan and execute a campaign without a budget and without managing your cash flow.
Public funding is a much simpler option.
- Logic not emotion - Friday, Nov 18, 11 @ 5:14 pm:
Probably woulnd’t work; but what about full disclosure with candidate being prohibited from voting on any issue directly affecting any contributor of over x $ or %?
For instance, a certain utility company donates $$$,$$$ to your campaign, no problem. You just can’t vote on or otherwise impact any legislation in which that company has more than a nominal interest.