Re: Re: new campaign reform idea

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

SLATE wrote:
> >[Anonymous donantions of unlimited amounts.] A trusted financial
> >institution say Vanguard sets up accounts in the names of all recognized
> >candidates. If you want to contribute to Bush, you write a check to
> >Vanguard with instructions to deposit it in the Bush account.

Andrew writes:
> It's an impractical idea. It rests on a trusted central authority.
> Instead of the current decentralized approach to detecting untoward
> activity, there would be one and only one entity that could identify
> corrupt political behavior.

actually, the job of the central authority isn't to _identify_ corrupt
behavior. Rather, its job is to prevent such behavior: if Bush doesn't
really know who's paying the campaign contribution checks, he doesn't know
who to shower with benefits. I don't know if this would work, though.

> That one entity would have the ability to cheat.

why would Vanguard (or whoever) cheat?

> The temptation to do so would be overwhelming. You could have a
> Big 5 accounting firm looking over their shoulder, but that only increases
> the number of eyeballs that see the secret information. Bruce Schneier has
> a good book, "Secrets and Lies," on why perfect security
> is impossible on the Internet and everywhere else. Ayres should check
> it out.
>
> This is a typical elite proposal. Keep the important information
> secret, they say, for the common folk can't be trusted with the actual
> facts. As an alternative to the Ayres plan, we could ban soft money
> donations at the federal and state levels. That's not a perfect plan,
> but it has the advantage of both improvement and continued
> transparency.

but that kind of plan always has loopholes, too.


Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine