Digital cash and campaign finance reform

Steve Schear

8 Sep 2003 8 Sep '03

1:31 p.m.

Everyone knows that money is the life blood of politics. The topic of campaign finance reform in the U.S. has been on and off the front burner of the major media, for decades. Although the ability of citizens and corporations to support the candidates and parties of their choice can be a positive political force, the ability of political contributors to buy access and influence legislation is probably the major source of governmental corruption. Despite some, apparently, honest efforts at limiting these legal payoffs there has been little real progress. The challenge is to encourage "neutral" campaign contributions. Perhaps technology could lend a hand. One of the features of Chaimian digital cash is unlinkability. Normally, this has been viewed from the perspective of the payer and payee not wishing to be linked to a transaction. But it also follows that that the payee can be prevented from learning the identity of the payee even if they wished. Since the final payee in politics is either the candidate or the party, this lack of knowledge could make it much more difficult for the money to be involved in influence peddling and quid pro quo back room deals. By combining a mandated digital cash system for contributions, a cap on the size of each individual contribution (perhaps as small as $100), randomized delays (perhaps up to a few weeks) in the "posting" of each transaction to the account of the counter party, it could create mix conditions which would thwart the ability of contributors to easily convince candidates and parties that they were the source of particular funds and therefore entitled to special treatment. Comments? steve A foolish Constitutional inconsistency is the hobgoblin of freedom, adored by judges and demagogue statesmen. - Steve Schear

Show replies by date

Tim May

8 Sep 8 Sep

2:35 p.m.

On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 10:11 AM, Steve Schear wrote:

...

Everyone knows that money is the life blood of politics. The topic of campaign finance reform in the U.S. has been on and off the front burner of the major media, for decades. Although the ability of citizens and corporations to support the candidates and parties of their choice can be a positive political force, the ability of political contributors to buy access and influence legislation is probably the major source of governmental corruption. Despite some, apparently, honest efforts at limiting these legal payoffs there has been little real progress. The challenge is to encourage "neutral" campaign contributions. Perhaps technology could lend a hand.

One of the features of Chaimian digital cash is unlinkability. Normally, this has been viewed from the perspective of the payer and payee not wishing to be linked to a transaction. But it also follows that that the payee can be prevented from learning the identity of the payee even if they wished. Since the final payee in politics is either the candidate or the party, this lack of knowledge could make it much more difficult for the money to be involved in influence peddling and quid pro quo back room deals.

By combining a mandated digital cash system for contributions, a cap on the size of each individual contribution (perhaps as small as $100), randomized delays (perhaps up to a few weeks) in the "posting" of each transaction to the account of the counter party, it could create mix conditions which would thwart the ability of contributors to easily convince candidates and parties that they were the source of particular funds and therefore entitled to special treatment.

Comments?

All a contributor who wishes to be "credited" with having contributed has to do is "encode" his identity or that of his organization in the _amount_ of the contribution. This can be done out-of-band, even posted on a Website: "Remember, gun owners! Show your support by contributing _exactly_ $91.37 to the candidates we recommend." The pile of contributions of $91.37 would be just as sure (actually, only about 99% sure, for obvious statistical reasons) an indication of what the campaign donations were about as having a name attached. (Sort of a higher-precision parallel to the practice of paying soldiers with $2 bills so that local merchants would really understand just how important the local military base was to their business.) And if the system is unlinkable, then of course the contributions need not be N contributions from N different people. They could be N contributions of "91.37" from one contributor, a contributor who sends the politician an out-of-band (e-mail) message telling him exactly what to expect. There are other ways to thwart this idea. And this use of digital cash got talked about a lot here several years ago. Having Big Brother run a "mix" where all such unlinkable contributions are pooled and then disbursed is an obvious fix (but then no need for digital cash...ordinary checks and money orders and cash accomplish the same thing, once Big Brother is the one holding and disbursing the cash). Also, it will never fly for just general social reasons. Not only would such a system also be usable for untraceable payoffs (a feature for our kind of people, but a problem for some others), but the complaint would be heard that the computer-illiterate would not have equal access, blah blah. Also, the issue with campaign reform has And needless to say, the entire concept of "campaign reform" is profoundly contrary to the Bill of Rights. Everyone involved in limiting political speech via "campaign reform" deserves to be tried and hanged. I'd really hate to see a digital cash company firebombed because of its involvement with the forces of darkness. In any case, campaign finance reform is essentially uninteresting and statist. --Tim May "Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat." --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11

Harmon Seaver

9 Sep 9 Sep

9:54 a.m.

New subject: cats

On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:15:31AM -0700, Tim May wrote:

...

"Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat." --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11

Cats always have an alpha cat. And they often have pissing contests to determine the pecking order. This is just as true of house cats as it is of lions. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

ken

1:23 p.m.

Tim May wrote:

...

In any case, campaign finance reform is essentially uninteresting and statist.

Yes Tim, but as we happen to live in places where states make laws and employ men with guns to hurt us if we disobey those laws then we do have an interest (in the other sense) in who gets to run the organs of the state. If you live next to the zoo you may be uninterested in the design of the lion's cage but you sure as hell aren't disinterested in it.

Tim May

2:05 p.m.

On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, at 09:58 AM, ken wrote:

...

Tim May wrote:

...
In any case, campaign finance reform is essentially uninteresting and statist.

Yes Tim, but as we happen to live in places where states make laws and employ men with guns to hurt us if we disobey those laws then we do have an interest (in the other sense) in who gets to run the organs of the state.

If you live next to the zoo you may be uninterested in the design of the lion's cage but you sure as hell aren't disinterested in it.

I wouldn't want to live near a death camp, either, but that doesn't mean I would think designing better gas chambers is a noble or interesting thing to do (well, maybe for ten million or so statists and inner city welfare mutants, but that's for another post). Designing systems to thwart free speech is not noble, and not very interesting. (Campaign finance laws are thwartings of free speech, clearly.) --Tim May "That government is best which governs not at all." --Henry David Thoreau

Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law

8 Sep 8 Sep

2:37 p.m.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=60331 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=272787 http://www.cfp2000.org/papers/franklin.pdf http://www.yale.edu/yup/books/092628.htm On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Steve Schear wrote:

...

Everyone knows that money is the life blood of politics. The topic of campaign finance reform in the U.S. has been on and off the front burner of the major media, for decades. Although the ability of citizens and corporations to support the candidates and parties of their choice can be a positive political force, the ability of political contributors to buy access and influence legislation is probably the major source of governmental corruption. Despite some, apparently, honest efforts at limiting these legal payoffs there has been little real progress. The challenge is to encourage "neutral" campaign contributions. Perhaps technology could lend a hand.

One of the features of Chaimian digital cash is unlinkability. Normally, this has been viewed from the perspective of the payer and payee not wishing to be linked to a transaction. But it also follows that that the payee can be prevented from learning the identity of the payee even if they wished. Since the final payee in politics is either the candidate or the party, this lack of knowledge could make it much more difficult for the money to be involved in influence peddling and quid pro quo back room deals.

By combining a mandated digital cash system for contributions, a cap on the size of each individual contribution (perhaps as small as $100), randomized delays (perhaps up to a few weeks) in the "posting" of each transaction to the account of the counter party, it could create mix conditions which would thwart the ability of contributors to easily convince candidates and parties that they were the source of particular funds and therefore entitled to special treatment.

Comments?

steve

A foolish Constitutional inconsistency is the hobgoblin of freedom, adored by judges and demagogue statesmen. - Steve Schear

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-- Please visit http://www.icannwatch.org A. Michael Froomkin | Professor of Law | froomkin@law.tm U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA +1 (305) 284-4285 | +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) | http://www.law.tm -->It's very hot here.<-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@metzdowd.com

Ian Grigg

2:52 p.m.

Steve Schear wrote:

...

By combining a mandated digital cash system for contributions, a cap on the size of each individual contribution (perhaps as small as $100), randomized delays (perhaps up to a few weeks) in the "posting" of each transaction to the account of the counter party, it could create mix conditions which would thwart the ability of contributors to easily convince candidates and parties that they were the source of particular funds and therefore entitled to special treatment.

How would you audit such a system? I'm not that up on political cash, but I would have expected that there would be a need to figure out where money was coming from, by some interested third party at least. Also there would be a need to prove that the funds were getting there, otherwise, I'd be the first to jump in there and run the mix. Or, the mint. iang

Steve Furlong

7:17 p.m.

On Monday 08 September 2003 14:34, Ian Grigg wrote:

...

Steve Schear wrote: <anonymous contributions to candidates>

...

How would you audit such a system? I'm not that up on political cash, but I would have expected that there would be a need to figure out where money was coming from, by some interested third party at least.

Would you need to audit it? So long as the contributions can't be tied to a quid-pro-quo arrangement, let the candidates collect as much as they can.

...

Also there would be a need to prove that the funds were getting there, otherwise, I'd be the first to jump in there and run the mix. Or, the mint.

Yah, that's a bigger problem. I guess the first step is, establish a digital bank with at least the credibility and trustworthiness of an ordinary, audited and regulated bank. But without the auditing and regulation because, well, this is the internet age. <grin> -- Steve Furlong Computer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel "If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all!" -- Rep. Henry Waxman

Bill Stewart

9:28 p.m.

Steve - The whole thing is a crock, and the problems aren't technical. None of the proposed users of the system have any desire to use it, except perhaps as a front for other activities, and the people who'd want them to make them use it are just meddlers. It's funny how any time you bring up the First Amendment in the context of tobacco advertising or internet pornography, they say "Oh, no, it's not about that, it's about *political* speech", but if you bring it up in the context of actual political speech, well then, oh, no, the First Amendment is about not arresting ranters on soapboxes in the park, or letting people print newspapers as long as there's official identifying information about the printer, but it's *certainly* not about actually letting people fund *electoral* speech, because elections are *way* too important to let unapproved members of the *public* influence the outcomes.... The couple of papers that Michael Froomkin referenced are pretty much the canonical references to the approach you're talking about, but just because there are academics proposing it doesn't mean it isn't still a total crock. Now, if you're talking about *real* campaign finance reform, as in permitting people to engage in free speech even if it requires money to transmit that speech to their intended recipients, fully anonymous digital cash is useful for that, in the obvious ways, and payer-anonymous payee-disclosing digital cash has its uses as well, if you like to be able to trace the people you're paying, and anonymous and pseudonymous publishing are also obviously useful, and then of course there's Blacknet if you want the real info on candidates. You don't need 100% technical guarantees of anonymity for most political work; the public can usually guess that "Paid for by Californians for Motherhood and Apple Pie" is probably the prison guards' union, or the major opponent of the candidate that the negative TV ad was about, or whatever, but unless there's a lawsuit or actual investigative reporter, nobody's going to bother tracking them down. Unfortunately, softmoney.com got snapped up a few years ago; I'd been planning to set it up as a site for donating your two cents to John McCain, when he was ranting about banning it. "paid for by Californians Against Bogus Campaign Financing Regulations, John Doe #238, Treasurer"

Joseph Ashwood

11:06 p.m.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Schear" To: ; [anonymous funding of politicians]

...

Comments?

Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from." Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it. By implementing this we'll see a backwards trend. It will be harder to prove the buyout (actually impossible), but the involved parties will know exactly who did the paying. Right now you can actually see a similar usage in the Bustamante (spelling?) campaign in the California Recall Election, the Native Americans donated $2M to him in spite of a limit of ~22k by donating from several people. Same method only now we know who did the paying. Joe Trust Laboratories Changing Software Development http://www.trustlaboratories.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@metzdowd.com

Steve Schear

9 Sep 9 Sep

12:11 a.m.

At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote:

...

----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Schear" To: ; [anonymous funding of politicians]

...
Comments?

Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from." Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it.

Not so fast. I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of payments. So, some of the contributions would arrive almost immediately others/many might take weeks to arrive. steve "...for every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken

Joseph Ashwood

11:09 a.m.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Schear" Subject: Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform

...

At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote:

...
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Schear" To: ; [anonymous funding of politicians]

...
Comments?

Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from." Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it.

Not so fast. I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of payments. So, some of the contributions would arrive almost immediately others/many might take weeks to arrive.

You act like they aren't already used to addressing that "problem." I'll go back to the Bustamante, simply because it is convenient right now. Bustamante recieved a multi-million dollar donation from the Native Americans, this was not done through a single check, that would be illegal, instead it was done through multiple smaller checks, each of which ends up randomized and delayed in processing (USPS is wonderful source of randomness), so the actual occurance of the donations is scattered acros several days, from several accounts, by several people, and I'm sure Bustamante never even looked to see who the donations were actually from, just that the full amount arrived. The "problem" that you found, is already addressed, and already not a problem. Joe Trust Laboratories Changing Software Development http://www.trustlaboratories.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@metzdowd.com

Tim May

2:18 p.m.

On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 08:39 PM, Steve Schear wrote:

...

At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote:

...
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Schear" To: ; [anonymous funding of politicians]

...
Comments?

Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from." Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it.

Not so fast. I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of payments. So, some of the contributions would arrive almost immediately others/many might take weeks to arrive.

Why are you not addressing the more direct attack, the one I described yesterday? "The contributions you receive for $87.93 came from our members." Unless the amounts are consolidated by a third party or dithered (so much for digital money being what it claims to be), this covert channel bypasses the nominal name-stripping. --Tim May "According to the FBI, there's a new wrinkle in prostitution: suburban teenage girls are now selling their white asses at the mall to make money to spend at the mall. ... Now, you see, the joke here, of course, is on White America, which always felt superior to blacks, and showed that with their feet, moving out of urban areas. "White flight," they called it. Whites feared blacks. They feared if they raised their kids around blacks, the blacks would turn their daughters and prostitutes. And now, through the miracle of MTV, damned if it didn't work out that way! " --Bill Maher, "Real Time with Bill Maher," HBO, 15 August 2003

Steve Schear

3:05 p.m.

At 09:28 AM 9/9/2003 -0700, Tim May wrote:

...

On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 08:39 PM, Steve Schear wrote:

...
At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote:

...
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Schear" To: ; [anonymous funding of politicians]

...
Comments?

Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from." Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it.

Not so fast. I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of payments. So, some of the contributions would arrive almost immediately others/many might take weeks to arrive.

Why are you not addressing the more direct attack, the one I described yesterday?

"The contributions you receive for $87.93 came from our members."

Unless the amounts are consolidated by a third party or dithered (so much for digital money being what it claims to be), this covert channel bypasses the nominal name-stripping.

Sorry, I replied to this but apparently forgot to cc cypherpunks.... Limiting each individual contribution to fixed amounts (say $1, $5, $10, $20 and $100) should close that loophole.

...

--Tim May

"According to the FBI, there's a new wrinkle in prostitution: suburban teenage girls are now selling their white asses at the mall to make money to spend at the mall.

I guess I must not look like a potential client 'cause no young 'ho ever came up to me and solicited for a 'party'. steve A foolish Constitutional inconsistency is the hobgoblin of freedom, adored by judges and demagogue statesmen. - Steve Schear

Tim May

3:38 p.m.

On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, at 11:47 AM, Steve Schear wrote:

...

At 09:28 AM 9/9/2003 -0700, Tim May wrote:

...
Why are you not addressing the more direct attack, the one I described yesterday?

"The contributions you receive for $87.93 came from our members."

Unless the amounts are consolidated by a third party or dithered (so much for digital money being what it claims to be), this covert channel bypasses the nominal name-stripping.

Sorry, I replied to this but apparently forgot to cc cypherpunks....

On this topic, I very strongly suggest to people that they not carry on conversations on both open lists and moderated lists. Also, I thought Perrypunks was a "no politics, crypto only" list? Debating how to do campaign finance reform is heavily political, and very light on cryptography, math, etc.

...

Limiting each individual contribution to fixed amounts (say $1, $5, $10, $20 and $100) should close that loophole.

There are too many loopholes to close. You also don't address the other point I raised, that if an "untraceable campaign contribution system" is in fact unlinkable to the donor, then Warren Buffett is able to donate $10 million, all in "unlinkable" contributions. (Nothing wrong with this, of course, but it sure does contradict the "only small contributions" intent of the various statist rules about campaigns.) So, why work on a system which is guaranteed to fail, by its nature? And guaranteed to fail for social reasons, when it is pointed out that inner city negroes rarely have access to PCs or digital money systems and that the system thus skews toward techies and those with computers? --Tim May --Tim May "Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity." --Robert A. Heinlein

Joseph Ashwood

8:32 p.m.

New subject: [cdr] Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform

----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim May" Subject: [cdr] Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform

...

There are too many loopholes to close.

I think that's the smartest thing any one of us has said on this topic. Joe

James A. Donald

2 Oct 2 Oct

2:47 a.m.

New subject: Return of the death of cypherpunks.

-- When a mailing list is full of crap, it dies, even though the regulars set killfiles to silence the offending posters. The reason is, no new people arrive. New people subscribe, see nothing but crap, unsubscribe. A mailing list or newsgroup needs a strong personality who is a prolific poster who keeps discussions on track, issues lots of good stuff, and reprimands trolls and nuts. That person, of course was Tim May. (past tense) It also needs a continual stream of new people, who bring new ideas, and unfamiliar ways of recognizing old ideas. The relentless mass spamming by professor rat and Jim Choate keeps new comers away, since 99% of the posts to the list is from people who hate the ideas that the list was created to further, and seek to shut it down, to prevent thought about and discussion of such ideas, and Tim May has succumbed to terminal grumps on discovering that the crypto transcendence is not coming soon. So when is the crypto trancendence coming? When does an encryption enabled internet start to undermine the power of the state? Well it is a little like web groceries. During the Dot.com hype, lots of web grocery companies popped up, and made about a cent on the dollar. They vanished, but, surprise surprise, there are now some real web grocery firms, and they are making a little bit of money. Darknet (frost over freenet) is going tolerably well, mostly in its Japanese incarnation, the repression being stronger in Japan. The Japanese experience tells us that any repression short of communist levels of repression will make darknet stronger, not weaker. The big threat to frost over freenet is the natifying of the net which makes more and more people into clients, not peers. Theoretically frost over freenet serves even those behind NATs, but really it does not, and cannot. Private money on the internet remains a small, non anonymous, backwater. There is no Chaumian anonymity. There is some "trust us" anonymity, located on offshore islands, controlled by people quite susceptible to US pressure. Account based money without true names or the mark of the beast is a tiny but profitable business. E-gold is probably the largest player, with about two million dollars a day changing hands, and twenty thousand micropayments a day (payments of less than a dollar) Two million a day is one five hundred thousandth of the turnover on the US$, and it is not growing very fast. Of course e-gold is just one of several, but it probably a large portion of the total. Suppose no-true-name account based money grows at thirty percent a year, which seems plausible. In due course some substantial portion of it will be chaumian. Then the US$ goes into crisis in 2060. As Adam Smith put it, "There is a lot of ruin in a nation.". Even if we suppose that the institutions of the crypto trancendence undergo remarkably rapid growth, the kind of growth that the dot bombs predicted in their business plans, the crypto trancendence does not hit until around 2025. But right now today, the internet is undermining the power of the state. The Japanese government went as far as democracy can go, and perhaps a bit further, to shut down file sharing. The result: Widespread adoption of software based on freenet. Cypherpunks 1, state 0. We have a long way to go, but we are going. Oh yeah, and once again I declare the mailing list that gave the name of this movement to be dead, though the fact that I am still posting on it would seem to prove it is alive, though breathing its last. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG dcuOonOpNgPgqZpgbJF0j6ClGa0j1it1Uk51kc/Q 4Nnby2D6L0GGqj2rwXsyWpY1xoKh901QBG9bsYjxG

John Young

4:35 p.m.

New subject: Return of the death of cypherpunks.

James overlooks the agricultural virtue of cypherpunks death and rebirth for the natural cycle gets rid of old growth and allows for a new improved version. No doubt the old crop doesn't get much satisfaction being taken for manure, nor do the new sprouts see any reason to hail the shit doing what it's supposed to do. Cypherpunks surely will not vaunt tradition when innovation starts to peter out. True, declaring the war is won and going over to war-storying is a grand tradition of bullshitting.

Amir Herzberg

9 Sep 9 Sep

11:44 a.m.

Steve suggested (see below) that anonymous cash may be useful to hide the identities of contributors from the party/candidate they contribute to. I'm afraid this won't work: e-cash protocols are not trying to prevent a `covert channel` between the payer and payee, e.g. via the choice of random numbers or amounts. Furthermore even if the e-cash system had such a feature, it would be of little help, since (a) there will be plenty of other ways the payer can convince the payee that it made the contribution and (b) in reality, candidates will have to return the favors even without knowing for sure they got the money - kind of `risk management` - I'm not sure what we want is to allow big contributors to gain favors while not really making as big a contribution as they promised... Best, Amir Herzberg At 10:11 08/09/2003 -0700, Steve Schear wrote:

...

Everyone knows that money is the life blood of politics. The topic of campaign finance reform in the U.S. has been on and off the front burner of the major media, for decades. Although the ability of citizens and corporations to support the candidates and parties of their choice can be a positive political force, the ability of political contributors to buy access and influence legislation is probably the major source of governmental corruption. Despite some, apparently, honest efforts at limiting these legal payoffs there has been little real progress. The challenge is to encourage "neutral" campaign contributions. Perhaps technology could lend a hand.

One of the features of Chaimian digital cash is unlinkability. Normally, this has been viewed from the perspective of the payer and payee not wishing to be linked to a transaction. But it also follows that that the payee can be prevented from learning the identity of the payee even if they wished. Since the final payee in politics is either the candidate or the party, this lack of knowledge could make it much more difficult for the money to be involved in influence peddling and quid pro quo back room deals.

By combining a mandated digital cash system for contributions, a cap on the size of each individual contribution (perhaps as small as $100), randomized delays (perhaps up to a few weeks) in the "posting" of each transaction to the account of the counter party, it could create mix conditions which would thwart the ability of contributors to easily convince candidates and parties that they were the source of particular funds and therefore entitled to special treatment.

Comments?

steve

A foolish Constitutional inconsistency is the hobgoblin of freedom, adored by judges and demagogue statesmen. - Steve Schear

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participants (12)

Amir Herzberg
Bill Stewart
Harmon Seaver
Ian Grigg
James A. Donald
John Young
Joseph Ashwood
ken
Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law
Steve Furlong
Steve Schear
Tim May