CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
June 11, 2011 01:26 AM UTC
25 Comments
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Basically that’s a ban on all political donations combined with a ban on any voting by all current elected representatives. Not a single elected who has ever taken a donation could have voted on health care reform.
It wouldn’t have to shut down government. You could delay the implementation date so that elected representatives would have time to adopt a system for publicly financing elections. And it does not ban contributions at all. In fact it doesn’t even address contributions. Politicians could continue to take contributions. They just couldn’t vote on any issues that directly affect their contributors. That would be considered unethical and would come with severe penalties.
Bennet received contributions from Wall Street. He also received contributions from labor unions. It’s pretty common for opposing sides of various issues to both donate to an elected official. So what happens then? Nobody can vote on anything.
isn’t that more important?
Only until it changes government.
Me, I’m in favor of the change.
If you want to punt, that’s up to you.
Campaigns are expensive, people take campaign contributions from anywhere they can get them. Whether or not they vote with or against the agenda of the contributor is entirely up to the elected official.
Calling campaign contributions “legalized bribery” is asinine, and it completely ignores the reality of running an effective, winning campaign.
Do I think the system is perfect? Hell no. But until it changes, people have to take money from PACs, individuals, and other forms that we the voters may find unseemly or have goals we disagree with. It is up to us to decide whether or not we want to support a candidate who takes money from a group or individual with whom we disagree.
I support campaign finance reform, bu not because taking money is tantamount to bribery. I support it because it would allow candidates to focus their efforts on actually helping people, solving problems, or addressing issues, rather than spending 80% of their time raising money.
Simply put, if you don’t like how someone votes, don’t vote for them. Forcing politicians to “recuse” themselves from voting on issues purely because they took campaign contributions from an organization or individual that has a stake in the legislation would be a massive disservice to that person’s constituents.
If it were all this simple, there would actually be much less partisan gridlock than there is now. Whoever had the most money would just hammer legislation through without debate.
It is often the case that elected officials receive donations from groups or individuals representing both sides of an issue, which negates this entire premise. If your idea became law, then if two opposing sides both donated to a politician, then there could be no votes at all.
As we have seen with recent campaign finance reform, limiting the amount of money a campaign can directly receive doesn’t change anything — it only makes it harder for the public and the media to figure out where the money is really being spent because it ends up in “issue committees” and other much less transparent accounts. Your proposal would have the same effect. The same donors would still support these candidates, but it would just be done through more third-party advertisements.
Is your handmaiden off work early today? 😉
…I might get tired of that line. In a few months.
This is the bogeyman of politics. It’s not real.
I’ve heard Perlmutter address this question a few times with the people who think money = buying influence no matter what, and he actually swayed me a bit. I still like the idea of publicly funded campaigns, though; not because I agree with the conspiracy theorists (though, as in Wisconsin, there are a few cases of definite kickbacks to donors) but because I want to see my electeds and candidates have time to do their jobs without having to choose between being effective in office or holding enough fundraisers to win.
It appears that Notre Dame law professor, John Copeland Nagle, doesn’t think this is such a far-fetched idea. Check out this article:
http://www.nd.edu/~ndlaw/facul…
How many people contributed to Obama’s campaign last cycle?
If he was forbidden from voting on anything that was of interest to any one of those constituents, he wouldn’t be able to sign a single piece of legislation.
If you want to pass something that will fix campaign financing, you are pretty much limited to one option – an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enforces strict funding limits for elections (direct, indirect, and “soft” money) combined with a similarly strict restriction on lobbying activities that covers everyone related to the elected official – and the amendment needs to cover states as well.
So long as the U.S. Supreme Court considers artificial “people” as people for purposes of free speech and political donations, and so long as free speech covers elections (which it arguably should to some extent), you will have something that looks like legalized bribery to at least some…
This is not a simple amendment to craft, and the attempts I’ve seen so far either don’t go far enough or go too far in restricting our civil liberties.
It’s totally unconstitutional, too. But I’m for it anyway.
I think it’s time to shake things up and have a discussion.
Besides, I probably have only one last windmill in me to tilt at before I die. This one is as good as any.
But it could be done at the state level through the ballot initiative process. And sorry, it is not an idiotic idea. Please go back to the link I posted in “Not so fast!” You will see that a highly respected law professor at Notre Dame University makes a very good case for this idea, almost stating what I have proposed verbatim. It’s a long article that goes into detail about how it could be done and what it would mean. Please read it and don’t be so quick to judge this idea out-of-hand. I think it has real merit and real potential to change the face of politics.
p.s. You know what’s idiotic? People who think the President of the United States votes on anything.
PR was suggesting that the president votes with his pen when he signs a piece of legislation…not that he actually casts a vote as would a legislator.
I am a strong supporter of campaign reform. I like the idea of making legislators wear patches from their major contributors on their clothing…much like NASCAR drivers do. Then it would be easy for us to see who they really represent.
who our legislators really represent (e.g., see also Michael Bennett/Wall Street); the real difficulty for the electorate is in seeing who our legislators really are. (Wouldn’t it be nice to have an active, involved, and uncorrupted Fourth Estate.)
Patches might help, but I have this vision of our legislators wandering around entomed inside in a literal burqa of thousands upon thousands of sponsorship patches.
“My Senator, what a very large sponsorship you have?”
“The better to cover my weiner, my dear.”
(Dunno’ — might help, couldn’t hurt.)
For the same reasons. When you run for office, many people contribute to your campaign. I’m guessing that even if you’re a solidly anti-corporate candidate you have contributors working for banks, investment houses, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies – you get the picture.
There is simply no way to tell legislators, governors, elected judges, or anyone else who has to run a campaign that they must know the interests of all of their contributors and must recuse themselves from voting any time an item before them has to do with one of those interests. The alternative is that no legislator accepts donations from anyone – or perhaps accepts campaign funds only from a single industry association, making them truly bought and paid for. It’s just not rational, Notre Dame professor or no.
And under the current Federally imposed standards as set up by Citizens United, it is unlikely that any law or initiative targeting a narrower group of contributors (e.g. corporate type donors) would be found Constitutional. So the proposal must be “all or nothing”.
Without a reform of the U.S. Constitution, both the Federal government and states are severely limited in the restrictions they can place upon campaign financing. This is in some ways a good thing; if Congress and/or the States had the power to regulate speech around election campaigns, they could choose to restrict legitimate book publishers, news media, bloggers… A proposed amendment would have to be very careful to tread a line where it is effective yet protective, and I have yet to see such a proposal.
Here’s a good one. Once again I urge you to read it:
http://www.nd.edu/~ndlaw/facul…
http://www.nd.edu/~ndlaw/facul…
At present, under Citizens United, the largest “contributors” to a campaign might not be contributors at all, but rather independent expenditures. In fact, it appears that as we gear up for 2012, the so-called SuperPACs springing up after the SCOTUS ruling may well suck up enough money to outspend the campaigns. And as the candidates cannot claim to have control over those independent expenditures, no ethics law would reasonably be able to penalize them.
So it’s not really a “good proposal” under the terms of what would be necessary to actually fix the problem. Without the authority to sufficiently restrict election speech, our only functional recourse is full disclosure.
We accept the fact that money will find a way because the votes have a gigantic financial impact. So we open the spigot.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling today decided in favor of legislative conflict-of-interest rules. However, the case revolved around a close relationship between the legislator and the potential interested party.
ElectionLawBlog summarizes the opinion, and I’ll highlight the important part:
Something as broad as what you’re proposing would almost certainly run afoul of the highlighted section and be ruled unconstitutional.