Campaign Finance Reform

Campaign finance reform is fundamental to sustainable communities.

Huge sums of campaign cash do influence decisions made by our elected officials.

The effects are often subtle, but are widespread, and compound greatly over time.

We cannot expect public servants to put the interests of the public sector over those of their major contributors as long as money alone wins elections. Furthermore, public servants must be freed from the burdens of non-stop fundraising.

Here are policy solutions to reform elections and build sustainability-oriented government:

• Build an election internet that brings free candidate information to every voter, including free cyber-voter kiosks in public places.
• Require all broadcasters to broadcast political debates regularly and at varying times.
• Set up streaming internet videos of political debates so people can watch them any time.
• Ban soft money and large contributions.
• Ban all corporate contributions.
• Implement touch-screen voting nationwide as soon as possible.
• Require contributions to come from within the contested state or district.
• Adopt spending limits and strict campaign seasons.
• Experiment with pilot projects such as modified lotteries.  (Read an entertaining short story on this subject!)

In America, election reform efforts keep growing stronger. The efforts of Senators McCain and Feingold help. The efforts of groups like:

force politicians to take the issue more seriously by working non-stop to promote public knowledge of election reform issues.

In the United States, the Federal Election Commission is the government agency charged with regulating campaign financing and enforcing existing laws.