So many American political writers clamor for “campaign finance reform.”
They have been clamoring for years. Years. Years. Yet nothing is being done. Is anybody not seeing anything wrong here? Like, we, the people, should be in charge?
Canada has reasonably sensible campaign financing laws. Could not the USA use Canada as an example?
Yet the influence of big money in Canadian politics is still around. Maybe not to the same degree as the USA. But there are favors being exchanged between the donors and the players. Canadian election campaigns still need money. Whether the favor is for $4,000 or $400,000, it still counts as a favor.
I have a solution to reduce those favors to zero. Absolute zero.
Let’s build the TDG
TDG is my alternative democracy. Elections cannot be won by expensive campaigns, which later turn into favors. Here’s why:
The TDG electoral structure is granulated. Instead of electoral units of 40,000 residents or 100,000 or 500,000, the TDG has units of about 200 residents. Now that is pretty radical, right?
I call these units “neighborhoods.” Most likely, the boundaries of each neighborhood would reflect a community or possible community. The residents would have some opportunity to get to know each other.
Then once a year, the residents cast their vote for one of their fellow neighbors to move into TDG governance.
The TDG will educate voters how to vote. Before each election, there should be some communication about voting for “good character” and “capacity for governance.” And there will also be some communication about not voting for people who seem to belong to a faction of some kind. But after those reminders, the voters are free to vote for whomever they want.
And many of these votes will go toward credible neighbors who have earned some degree of trust and respect from their fellow neighbors. They earned this trust and respect by being capable and proven community leaders, not because some unknown sources gave them a whole bunch of money to run a campaign to get their name and platform out.
Let me put this in a different way. Let’s assume a turkey wants to get elected as his TDG neighborhood representative. He gets some money to put up lawn sign and hire canvassers. He goes from house-to-house, begging for votes. But he probably won’t get enough votes to win the job for three reasons. First, the neighbors will already know that he is a turkey. All the lawn signs and pamphlets in the world cannot mask the turkey nature. Second, the culture of the TDG will eschew campaigning. Many voters will cast their vote toward someone who is not campaigning. Third, the neighborhood representative is mostly a volunteer job. Ambitious people will not want this job, let alone campaign for it. So there’s no reason for “big money” to support any candidate at the neighborhood tier. Which means no favors to be exchanged later.
Let me put this in a different way. Neighborhood representatives will be elected on their previous history in the neighborhood, not by what they promise. Or by money to buy a glitzy campaign.
Campaigning might convince a few gullible neighbors to vote for a campaigner. We should expect a few turkeys will still get elected into the first tier. But not many. And most of those turkeys will not find their way into the second tier. For sure, campaigning won’t be the way to rise higher in the TDG.
In contrast, western democracies seem to place too many turkeys in high positions. And these turkeys owe favors.
Instead of campaign finance reform, let’s just build a new democracy where campaigning, begging for votes, donations to campaigns, and favors for donating just cannot happen.
Published on Medium 2024
