Digital cash and campaign finance reform

[Steve Schear]

At 06:31 PM 9/9/2003 +0200, Amir Herzberg wrote:
>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...

I think that is exactly what we want.  When multiple, creditable, 
contributors approach a candidate (who have different, perhaps opposing 
agendas) and tell them they have made substantial contributions to the 
campaign what will the candidate do when the bank account figures don't add 
up and it comes time for delivering on requests from these 
contributors?  You know that once special interests understand that the 
candidates can't tell who contributed many attempt to cheat.  The result 
could be to greatly reduce special interest campaign contributions and 
their power in government.  It could make for an interesting study in game 
theory.

steve


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