Question

Candidates spend an enormous amount of money while running for office. Should the government control the amount of money that each candidate can receive in donations and use in the election process? Or should candidates be free to spend and receive as much money as they want? What can or should we do about campaign financing?

Answer 1

Funds should come from the party represented through collected donations from various political camps without the candidate knowing where the funds came from to avoid favoritism, and not exceed a certain amount for either party, to avoid the higher campaign funds to be the contributing factor for election of the candidate. The public will have fairer decision making factors to vote for their candidate.

We need for the amount of money to be spent on campaigns to be around $5,000 and it must come out of the candidates personal account so that there will be no legal blackmailing going on or corporations expecting favors.

The ruling on Citizens United this January gave corporations the right to spend as much money on political campaigns as they want. In a nation where money controls media and advertising, which have the greatest influence on how citizens think and vote, limits to spending are crucial if the desired result is a government that is responsive to citizens rather than to corporate interests.

Without any restrictions on campaign finance, the richest candidate is strongly favored to win, regardless of merit. In a true democracy, someone should be able to run a successful campaign, even if they do not come from a rich background. Campaign finance laws are necessary to give a diverse set of candidates a fair chance at winning.

If you look at the current health care policy, it was crafted by people who make their money from health care. It was not what was good for the country, but what was good for them. What did we end up with? We now have a watered-down national health care system that was the worst of both worlds, still exorbitant with the government wrapped up in it.

In order for the playing field to remain level, all candidates who are campaigning should be subject to the same limits and regulations. Similar to the way school student councils prohibit buying votes, the government should enact the same rules. Campaigns should be kept clean and legal, and ethics should always be one of the most important points a candidate should think about.

I strongly support restrictions on political fund raising and campaign spending to guard democracy against the pressure of large amounts of money from institutions and from wealthy individuals. Money from concentrated sources distorts democracy in two ways. On the fund raising side, dependence on major donors makes candidates reluctant to take stands that the major donors would be opposed to. On the spending side, the battle of ideas we'd like to see in a campaign can be fought on very unfair terms if one side is armed with massive amounts of money. Ideas may end up prevailing by the brute force of spending, rather than by winning over voters on the merit of the ideas.