Sunday, January 15, 2006

Publicly Financed Elections?

Robert Hildebrand has advocated for the 100% public financing of elections. This suggestion is attractive because it promises to erase the corruption or appearance of corruption from elections. It aims to equalize the playing field so that any person would be able to run, without regard for past economic success or the ability to garner 3rd party financial support.

With those seeming upsides, I still have a gut reaction that says it won't work. It has the potential to be too expensive for the state, or each candidate would get too little money to be effective, or the state would have to screen candidates in some way.

I'm going to hold off taking a position right now. I want to do some reading on the website www.publicampaign.org and see if I can find some other useful material on how this is working out in states that are trying it.

3 comments:

Scott Hinrichs said...

I am opposed to public campaign financing. I wrote about this here and here. I urge you to peruse these articles before making up your mind on this issue.

Bradley Ross said...

I have read and recommend the articles linked at Reach Upward. In his articles, Scott mentions the experiments that are currently underway in some states, including Arizona. Part of the reason I'm resistant to forming much of an opinion on this subject is that I want to see how the experiments turn out. That is part of the cool thing about allowing states freedom to experiment with things.

Bradley Ross said...

LucyTaft, I'm glad you got something out of the blog. Your blog looks interesting as well. Good luck with the garbage dumpers and drinking kids. It looks like you have your work cut out for you.