"Voters pay for elections one way or another. Better that the price should be from tax dollars than corrupt policies and wasted officeholders."

Who in their right mind would disagree with this statement?
Nice article!

What is this with Arlen Specter? Is he trying to buy his way into Heaven? He's certainly changed from the days when he badgered and bullied Anita Hill.

But I'm glad to see clean election bills showing up. We might even see some Greens getting elected.

ezeflyer, your ideas are very intriguing. But for some reason it makes me envision a madhouse. Can you expand your thesis?

ezeflyer, You have been drinking haven't you?

So after we pay for the elections, what's to keep the candidates from taking personal bribes in various creative forms? Why do we need to pay big salaries to corruptible professional politicians when we can have free direct online democracy or government by public referendum?

If the internet is safe enough for banks, credit companies, for corporations, for purchases, for the CIA, FBI and the Pentagon, why can't it be made safe enough for our hiring of people by proposal and votes and making laws by online referenda? If two heads are better than one, wouldn't a million heads come up with more and better solutions than a handful of bought politicians?

As I see it, the problem is systemic and it is called "representative democracy". Our teachers and books were wrong. Representative democracy carries the seed of its own corruption. The answer to government corruption is direct grassroots democracy. Only the Green Party has this lasting solution.

Register Democratic to vote for Kucinich in the primaries.

Then reregister Green and vote for Nader or Kucinich in the general elction. (Did I get it right this time Kathyodat and Rebel Farmer? 8o))

Poet, You got it right!

Heard on NPR the other day:

CASH IS KING WHEN IT COMES TO PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.

... and waddayaknow ... since the days of house-to-house "Let me introduce myself; I'm running for [blank], and I'd like to ask for your vote," followed by a handshake, and most towns having at least 2 newspapers with opposite points of view, and a passle of radio commentators also with different points of view, and messy, sometimes boring, conventions that turned up eventually with a presidential candidate [no big-buck primaries then], and truly arduous campaigns with speeches at whistle-stops and from the back of a train, we didn't end up with a KING intent on EMPIRE [even though there was a hint of that in our history from time to time.]

We sure never have been a perfect country. Among the wonderful, true things, there always have been tremendous hypocrisy and downright
lies in our history books coloring the pages with our God-supported, "noble" intentions. [Ditto most countries' history books.]

But at least from time to time we'd have a president who was very intelligent, very decent over-all, who did care about the people, and who had vision, and also honored The Constitution of the United States.

As someone said on another CD's comment board:

BUSH MAKES ME MISS NIXON [great bumper sticker there].

NIXON made ME miss IKE [not a perfect man, but over-all a very good man].

And from that transition time, we'll never know whether JFK would have evolved into a really great president or not, and would have, in fact, gotten out of Vietnam as it is purported he was planning to do because he saw the shadows on the wall.

But after the tragic-figure of LBJ, who did initiate some great programs for the War on Poverty and did get very significant Civil Rights' legislation passed, we get to NIXON, where the nest of vipers cut their baby fangs on that man's strange nose. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, G.H.W.Bush, et al. ... and the ubiquitous, Machiavelian Kissinger. And it was back then, in that time, that the dark visions were already in play [think assassinations] and more were being conjured up, and the deceitful methodologies were already being practiced and the already-psychologically- twisted newies were taught and eager to learn, and here we are ... to the nightmare of today.

Let us keep faith that there are so many very good and decent people on this planet, and so many well-known, but far more unsung heroes who work tirelessly toward justice and a reasonable life for all people, and that that goodness and decency will prevail in the end before it is too late, not just for our country, but for the whole world of people and other living things and the planet itself.

Let us keep faith with ourselves too, and do what we can do to help and to try to make a positive difference right where we are standing and wherever else we can.

We're definitely at the most significant crossroads we've ever been at as a species.

Hopefully, the travails and tumult of NOW are the growing pains of the adolescent that perhaps is going to reach a wise maturity in the not-too-distant future ...

OR ... and we all can fill in the blanks ...

The major cost of election campaigns is air time on TV and radio -- the broadcast channels that WE own. But the NAB makes sure that Congress will never vote to require them to broadcast campaign messages free.

We don't have to pay taxes to have public financing of campaigns; all we have to do is FORCE the broadcasters to use OUR wavelengths to broadcast candidates' messages without charge.

Alternatively, we can require broadcasters to bid every 5 years for a license, in which the current holder must match the highest bidder, and use the revenue to pay for air time for candidates.

kathyodat:
Here's a bit of information on E-Democracy from Wikipedia:

E-democracy, a portmanteau of electronic and democracy, comprises the use of electronic communications technologies, such as the Internet, in enhancing democratic processes within a democratic republic or representative democracy. It is a political development still in its infancy, as well as the subject of much debate and activity within government, civic-oriented groups and societies around the world.

The term is both descriptive and prescriptive. Typically, the kinds of enhancements sought by proponents of e-democracy are framed in terms of making processes more accessible; making citizen participation in public policy decision-making more expansive and direct so as to enable broader influence in policy outcomes as more individuals involved could yield smarter policies; increasing transparency and accountability; and keeping the government closer to the consent of the governed, increasing its political legitimacy. E-democracy includes within its scope electronic voting, but has a much wider span than this single aspect of the democratic process.

E-democracy is also sometimes referred to as cyberdemocracy or digital democracy. Prior to 1994, when the term e-democracy was coined in the midst of online civic efforts in Minnesota, the term teledemocracy was prevalent. "Teledemocracy", coined by political scientist Ted Becker in 1981, combined elements of e-democracy with those of "deliberative democracy" coined about the same time. "Teledemocracy" then is an umbrella term that includes both "e-democracy," "deliberative democracy" and many types of "direct democracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy

Other names for E-democracy are electronic democracy, grassroots democracy, 1,000 year democracy, direct online democracy (D.O.D.) and Global Online Democracy (G.O.D.). Here is a link that describes the successes of a low tech version of direct democracy:

http://www.ni4d.org/library/fossedal_direct_democracy_in_switzerland.htm

Nietzsche

Not right now.

ezeflyer, I see where information overload could be a problem

ezeflyer, I see your getting a lot of attention. The ancient Greeks had thousands of senators but they still decided that Socrates drink Hemlock. I know you're just making a suggestion and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.
I do think we all agree that campaign financing needs to be changed in a big way. I'm also fairly sure that more than a few politicians would be glad to have this load lifted from them of constantly asking for money.
Another positive result would be not only getting rid of having to keep your donors happy, our political leaders would be free to do their job better and free to introduce legislation without the fear of getting some group of donors angry with them.
Publicly financed political campaigns, making election day a national day off, and voting machines which leave a paper trail: In my view, this is the only way to get our system of government closer to the track its supposed to be running on.
Lets level the playing field. It's better for everyone except those who shouldn't be in office anyway.

kathyodat:
Its not that complicated really. We are sharing information and communicating online. What is missing is our direct democratic ability to propose laws and vote on them online, by phone, mail, town meeting and so on, by referendum. Professional politicians do not like direct democracy because it takes away their power and eventually their jobs.

hybridoma:
Publicly financed campaigns are a way of keeping the patient alive longer, but representative democracy is dying of old age. Direct democracy is in its infancy here, but it has been working very well elsewhere as mentioned. Representative Democracy and Direct Democracy can be compared to a pushcart and a (an electric) Ferrari respectively.

Calling for public campaign funding is grasping at straws in the dark. Unintended consequences would result in more overall campaign spending, with funds now donated to candidates spent to infulence elections in other ways. After all, so long as we retain some semblence of freedom of speech, how could I be prevented from spending my own money however I see fit to influence elections (and not just in TV ads)?
What is needed is to somehow contueract the dominent influence of advertising. Real, impartial debates - perhaps like Lincoln-Douglas - candidates could not duck held shortly before elections would certainly help, as would aggressive, automatic, voter registration coupled with vote-by-mail (which would also eliminate the effect of early results from one part of the country affecting results elsewhere).
How to counter the influence of how the right-wing talk radio and TV hate machine preys on so many ignorant and stump-broke voters is another major issue, indeed!

Living here in Oregon with Bill Sizemore writing initiatives that sound great but wreck our economy and schools, it's a scary thought to expand it nationwide. If we had direct democracy with people proposing laws willy-nilly, I think we'd need a far more informed and educated public than we have at present. For example, the initiative that removed school financing from property taxes promised that the state legislature would cover the property tax loss. Well, it did, but it also cut the state share of funding and school budgets crashed. And property taxes didn't go down anyway, the county just inhaled the extra income. I'm wary of Pandora's box

That's not to say our professional politicians aren't betraying us, they are.

ezeflyer, I'll definitely look into what you are saying. I wasn't aware of any of this or I simply didn't pay any attention because everytime I hear things about elections and the process of electng, my mind just sort of fazes out. I quess you could call it voter apathy.

So long as you support a system that advances candidates with the most money to flush in their presidential campaign travel and media propoganda, you're likely to elect candidates who aren't compatible with the underlying beliefs expressed by the public. People indicate a frustration with the consumption, big business influence and corrupt energy industry matters linked by Bush, yet, until people begin to understand that each citizen perpetuates this media circus, then the system will not change. Once a president is elected, sure its easy enough to say he'll change legislation for future election campaigns, but even if he doesn't renig, it contradicts how he got into office. What does this say about the character of people entering the highest office? DO we really want the richest people to govern if they lack morals and ethics? Does their behaviour reflect the kind of example you desire to set for future generations? If not, what will you do? Apathy, select ignorance or indifference won't change things either.