At 11:32 AM 10/24/96 +0000, Matthew J. Miszewski wrote:

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While I have worked through essentially none of the details, if the system can be implemented well enough, all this kind of information will be blinded into oblivion. Donations won't be tallied individually, and news of their arrival will be disguised, possibly by limiting the size that is credited to the candidate per day and thus in effect splitting up a donation to make it "arrive" over a period of a week or two. Only overall totals will be reported, possibly rounded to only two significant figures, and even then possibly only on a weekly basis.

Politicians need money to pay bills. If you are cutting off all prediction of money appearing (which is impossible unless you get rid of all special interests) no campaign can ever have the ability to plan.

No, I didn't say I was "cutting off all prediction of money appearing." But it would be a long shot from having particular donor's names associated with particular dollar figures. And, the system would simply have to adjust. Campaigns would have to adjust their spending to match the current realities, and donors would have to recognize that they're going to have to donate a bit earlier to accomodate the delay.

This is a major part of all campaigns. Resistance to this will be high (not that this wasnt expected.)

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The candidate still gets the money, of course, and the contributor is still free to both donate and speak...separately. The thing that's been cut off is the association between the money and the speech...which is exactly what the problem is, isn't it?

See above for why the connection is not.

Try again. Rather than trying to prove that a system won't work, why not help develop one that will?

Why don't you run for office. I did. Reality, after all, is far better than theory.

I'd prefer doing something far more...uh...permanent than to merely REPLACE officeholders.

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But "vote delivery" can't be proven, or even demonstrated with a strong degree of assurance.

Every candidate ever endorsed by the Firefighters Union in my town have been absolutely elected. Looking at the firefighters voting records and matching with their addresses shows a distinct pattern of voting in almost every election.

"Firefighter's voting records"? I _thought_ we had a secret ballot in this country. Maybe you're from some town that I don't know about! Besides, what you're saying can be considered a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy. Some cities ALWAYS vote one way, or another. Over time, public employees simply adjust their politics to match their wallets, etc. Remember, these are PUBLIC employees after all, which really just means the employeees of the thugs who get into office. It does not serve their interests to go against the winning candidate. If, one year, the party normally out of office appears to be winning, the Firefighters will simply adjust their politics accordingly. Simple.

They have sufficient numbers to win every time.

Whichever candidate wins, "has sufficient numbers to win." Tell me something else I don't know.

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What I consider wrong is that government affects way too large a fraction of our lives, without apparent Constitutional justification. If the government at all levels were only, say, 1/10th of its current size, there would be much less motivation for corruption.

Power currupts. Not size of governement.

Size of government is evidence of the size of the corruption. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com