[AlwaysBCoding]

The thing is though, Lessig is completely right. Members of Congress spend 70% of their time raising money. They're not lawmakers, they're professional fundraisers. Think of a startup whose founders spent 70% of their time raising money, they would never get anything done. And since fundraising is now such an integral part of a Congressman's day to day, they have two classes of constitutes to think about: the voters, and the funders. And there is a very small group of people who give > 50% of all campaign cash and more or less have control over the entire country. This is why common sense laws that have majority support from the voters (gun control, marijuana legalization etc...) never get the traction they should. The funders don't want them, and they have the final say, not the voters. It's crazy how complacent people have become about government incompetence.

The becoming president and then resigning thing was weird. I'm glad he's dropping it, because you can hate the method all you want, and I too think he comes off really distant out of touch sometimes, but what he's saying needs to be heard.

[jacobolus]

Okay, but so what? Lessig has no chance of winning the Democratic Party nomination, so his campaign basically amounts to hijacking the primary to promote his message. Even if that message is “completely right”, so what? You think if Lessig gets a seat at the Democratic primary debates, he’ll be able to convince the Republicans in Congress to reverse course on campaign finance? Fat chance.

The most likely way to improve things at the moment is to elect another Democrat to office, and hope that Justice Scalia and/or Justice Kennedy resigns within the next few years, and the composition of the Supreme Court changes enough to reverse the Citizens United case. Also, hope that the Justice Department under a Democratic president stays aggressive about promoting voting rights around the country.

Beyond that, the next big hope is getting Democrats back in control of the House of Representatives, which probably can’t happen until after the 2020 census, and only if the Democrats gain control of enough state legislatures to redraw fairer district boundaries.

[Gotadime]

Having a single party in total control like that would be destructive to our country, no matter how you spin it. Both parties have legitimate points and interests that need to be represented in our system. I have never understood individuals that buy in 100% to a single party and just can't fathom the idea of the opposing party having any good ideas that need to be heard. Radicalism of any kind is dangerous - conservative or liberal.

[jacobolus]

Campaign finance reform is dead in the water as long as the Republicans control Congress (and as long as, per Citizens United, unlimited corporate spending on political advertising is considered protected speech).

So if we agree with Lessig that campaign finance reform is the most important national political priority, then electing a Democratic majority to the House is the necessary precondition. (I’m not saying you should agree with that, but it’s the premise of Lessig’s campaign.)

[gonehome]

Not really - The premise of Lessig's campaign is that the party in power is irrelevant, neither can do it because they're both corrupted by their need to raise funds (and notably that the people funding them are not the public).

This is partly why his ideas to fix it seem drastic - there really aren't any non drastic solutions that can work.

https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...

It has nothing to do with which party is in power - the affect of fundraising has corrupted the underlying incentives of the entire congress.

I found his book on the topic pretty convincing: http://republic.lessig.org/

[gonehome]

As a follow up - I like Lessig a lot and agree with most of his ideas. The tragic thing is that politics isn't really idea driven at scale, it's more controversy and 'alpha monkey' driven. Lessig comes off as a quiet and reasonable academic - he needs somebody as his front man that can be more forceful that the media will give more attention to (though I do think his presentations are really good).

[humanrebar]

> unlimited corporate spending on political advertising is considered protected speech

Probably an unpopular opinion in this thread, but...

It has always been protected speech. The Supreme Court just declined to make a distinction between The New York Times and an arbitrary group of citizens (or even a single citizen) doing a one-off publication.

[rayiner]

Yup. Citizens United wasn't a "is money speech case?" It was a case about whether the government could ban an unflattering movie about one of the leading candidates in the election. Its core political speech and always has been.

[comex]

So where do you think we should go from here? Honestly. I share your misgivings about regulating political speech, but then we get things like

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/20...

Whether or not you agree with the slant of that article, it is a fact that Super PACs have enabled a massive centralization of political contributions - which, even if there's a limit on how much advertising can accomplish in general (cf. Trump), is still fundamentally undemocratic, and should be fought. We probably can't just go back to how things used to be, so how do we go forward?

[hga]

And people should really be thinking twice about the consequences of suppressing core political speech from those they don't like, be it a single citizen publishing a book (in oral arguments the government admitted that fell into the McCain-Feingold ban), an arbitrary group of citizens producing and distributing a video about a public figure running for office, or the eeeeevil NRA with its five million members amplifying their voices in collective action, which e.g. AlwaysBCoding in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10403569 explicitly wants to silence (note below that one of the ways to achieve such survey results is to keep gun owners in the dark about what's actually being proposed).

Is "democracy" really enhanced by silencing one very large but disfavored side of the debate, by the side that just so happens to be catastrophically losing it? Was this what our founderes were thinking about when they had the 1st Amendment to the Constitution enshrine freedom of speech and the press?

To bring this back to Hillary!, the subject of the * GOVERNMENT CENSORED * 2008 campaign Citizens United video---yes, this really happened, the FEC got the District Court for the District of Columbia to ban it, per Wikipedia it "found that the film had no purpose other than to discredit Clinton's candidacy for president", which obviously is beyond the pale---well, in the debate a few days ago, echoing Obama's recent statements, she called for outright mass confiscation of guns with a token "buyback" compensation. I could put this advertisment together in a few hours, a few minutes if I was into video editing: http://www.pagunblog.com/2015/10/16/hillary-clinton-endorses...:

The ad for the general election writes itself:

Scene 1: “In Australia, the government confiscated 1/3 of the guns in the country. In America, 1/3 would be around 120 million guns”.

Scene 2: footage from Australia of big piles of guns getting ready to be melted down (it’s on YouTube in a documentary).

Scene 3: footage of Hillary saying Australia is a good example of what we should do in America.

Note that the NRA helped demolish the 1988 Dukakis campaign for President publicizing an even more clear quote, "I do not believe in people owning guns, only police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state.", which was the sole copy on a solid black background that was the chilling, high impact cover of the November 1988 issue of the American Rifleman. They wouldn't have been able to do if McCain-Feingold had been law back then.

These people want to deny us the soap box to present these incontestable facts, effectively denying us the ballet box by keeping the vast majority of affected gun owners in the dark. They really should think about which box follows.

[wyldfire]

I agree with your all of your concerns. But what if all campaigns for office were funded with public money instead of private money?

Seems like it would solve some of the stated problems without arguing over what some would call a "loophole" but others would recognize as "free speech."

[JackFr]

If you want to keep corporations from giving money to politicians, the only effective way to do it is to stop politicians from giving corporations money.

Limiting the scope of government is not ideological -- its pragmatic and practical.

[hga]

Or shaking corporations down. A whole lot of "gridlock" is merely milking proposals that'll help or hurt various companies and sectors, and collecting contributions to continue preventing the bad or pushing for the good. Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets is (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544103343) a really good book on the subject, taught me things I didn't know despite watching this sort of thing closely starting around the time of Watergate, like how there's a type of PAC a Congresscritter can establish that can be legally converted to subsidize their lifestyle.

This is one of the reasons for the constant changes in the tax code, despite the great uncertainty this creates for businesses and people. The obsession with short term results makes more sense when you realize long term financial planning is literally impossible (yeah, technically you might get that widget into production in a few years, but you really don't know how much money you'll be allowed to make from selling it).

[jjoonathan]

And what about politicians who give money to corporations by limiting the scope of government (see: deregulating energy markets -> Enron buys up capacity and shuts it down -> rolling blackouts and $$ in their pockets as prices spiked)?

Regulations aren't the only cause of friction, perverse incentives, and exploitative business models. They're also pretty much the only tool we have against tragedies of the commons. Deciding which regulations are good and which are bad is inherently ideological, and the declaration that we should generally assume they're bad is so extreme that Adam Smith himself would disapprove.

[JackFr]

I am not against unreasonable regulation, rather I'm in favor of broad principled regulation that takes the form laws passed by Congress and interpreted by courts. The Securities and Exchange Act of 1933 is a good example as was Glass-Steagall.

A law like Dodd-Frank on the other hand is an example of rent seeking by banks while Congress gets bought off while they act under the guise of 'reining in the banks.'

[unethical_ban]

It enrages me that you got downvoted, because I've thought this for almost as long as I've had political thought. Corporations and lobbyists would stop buying politicians if the scope of power were limited.

[tptacek]

That's fine, but as a positive-only, non-normative argument, 'jacobolus is right: the GOP opposes campaign finance reform. The issue here is the most effective way for Lessig to accomplish what Lessig wants to accomplish, not the best way to represent both parties.

[Bud]

And yet, I doubt you can point to any actual harm that occurred when Democrats did briefly hold both houses of Congress after Obama was elected. BTW, there never was "total control", at least not if you meant control of all three branches; the Supreme Court remained a solid conservative majority during that period. And the Republicans of course still had the filibuster, which is plenty of power to represent any "legitimate points and interests" that they sought to advance. And they were able to complain enough about Obamacare to flip the House back almost immediately in the next election.

If people vote for one party to control everything, maybe, just maybe, they had a good reason to do so. I see no reason to assume this would be automatically destructive to the country.

[irishcoffee]

If memory serves, the Democrats had the POTUS, the House, and the Senate in complete control for 2 years. Didn't get anything done.

I may be incorrect about this, was a while ago.

[GavinMcG]

When are you talking about? If it's Obama's first term, "complete" control would be a bit off – only 56 Dems in the Senate, and two left-leaning independents. Some aisle-crossing Republicans were needed for major legislation to pass.

And major legislation certainly did pass:

- Obamacare

- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus package)

- Dodd-Frank

- Fair Sentencing Act

- Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

- Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#M...

[irishcoffee]

Hmm, those are your examples?

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/opinion/atlas-obamacare-poor-m...

http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/09/american-recovery-reinvestm...

Dodd-Frank = "Here, take my taxes and bail out the country. After that, create PMI. Even though I didn't cause the problem, in order to buy a house I now need to piss away 200-300 bucks a month that goes towards _NOTHING_ making it even harder to afford to own my own home." (Fuck yeah)

"Fair Sentencing Act. In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the sentencing disparity between offenses for crack and powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1" (Thank Christ POTUS spent his valuable time analyzing the ratios of crack and coke, fuck yeah)

DADT, fully on board with this one. Sincerely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_o... (So more people can sue more people, b/c that was a problem before, excellent)

He is a failed 2-term POTUS. B/c of him, dems are destined to lose this election. He ran on change, funny how accurate he was.. 8 years later.

[humanrebar]

> Having a single party in total control like that would be destructive to our country, no matter how you spin it.

I'd argue it has been destructive to our country. Specifically with the way healthcare reform was passed. All democrats by the slimmest margin. Absolutely no wider support for one of the biggest changes in our country in a long time, as far as domestic policy goes. The result? More fighting than before. Complete gridlock on every other issue.

There is half a valid objection to say that Bush wasn't bipartisan either. That's not entirely true. He certainly wasn't bipartisan enough, but he certainly tried more than once (remember medicare part D? no child left behind which was also sponsored by Kennedy?). I don't think the President and the democrats are solely responsible for the bad blood. But I think a wise person would recognize that lacking ultramajority (>70%) consensus for a major rule change was a major contributor.

That's a long unpacking of why I agree. We have to find resolutions that not just a majority of people agree with, but almost everybody wants.

[Bud]

Huh? 60% support in Congress plus the support of the President plus the support of the Supreme Court (when the ACA was tested there) plus the overwhelming support of the American people wasn't good enough for you? Under what circumstances, then, WOULD you be able to accept that health care reform was a good idea and a good thing to pass?

The constant infighting caused by Republicans is a result of their corporate masters not wanting any health care reform passed, ever. And the gridlock they have created is a result of their endemic racism and inability to accept a black President. They stated, out loud for God's sake, from day one, that their admitted goal was to block Obama from doing anything at all.

Sorry, have to disagree. The amount of support for the ACA was plenty. Asking for even more support for that, in a country where we have Fox News around to brainwash a significant portion of Americans, just really amounts to insisting on permanent gridlock.

[woah]

Racism? The runner up in the republican primary is a black man. When you accuse anyone you dislike or disagree with of racism, you cheapen the term and devalue the experiences of those who are actually suffering from it.

Also, in general, you seem extremely partisan and basically want to treat politics like a soccer match. People like you are the reason that we have a corrupt 2 party system. You can't conceive of any possible higher goal than rooting for your team.

I know you'll respond to this with another laundry list of how the republicans are the root of all evil. Thanks in advance for proving my point.

[humanrebar]

60% is too low of a bar. 40% of a country vehemently disagreeing with a big change is a big deal. That's why the amendment process exists and is supposed to be used.

[Bud]

The amendment process isn't relevant here. Republicans were completely opposed to any version of Obamacare; amending it wouldn't have fixed matters for them. They were opposed in principle to any large new federal system to make it easier for citizens to buy health insurance.

Are you perhaps referring to Constitutional amendments?

[Gotadime]

All in one comment (never mind the absurdity this guy has posted in the rest of this thread):

- Citing ridiculous, unfounded, and irrelevant statistics that actually, when viewed objectively, support the opposing argument

- Completely neglecting to address any of the actual points made previously

- Straw manning the republican argument (which represents the thoughts of an entire portion of our population)

- Labeling an entire party racist

- Speaking in broad, absurd general strokes about statements that never were (and, for that matter, never could be) made

- And the classic....bashing Fox News, the easiest target ever and the fast way to a pseudo liberal's heart

Bud, you've got everything it takes to be a political shill. If you aren't already getting paid for this nonsense, you should be.

[jellicle]

You seem confused about cause and effect. The GOP started their policy of total obstructionism (no votes for any Democratic policies, period, regardless of merit) in December 2008, immediately after the elections. There were caucus meetings where this plan was laid out by leadership and agreed to by all members.

I don't think you can blame the passage of the ACA in 2009 for an obstruction policy begun in 2008. Time only flows in one direction, as far as I know.

If you were less ignorant about the subject, you would probably realize that the ACA passage without much Republican support was the result of Republican obstruction policies, not the cause of them.

[hga]

I think that deserves a Citation Needed, seeing as how I don't remember that, and to double check on the putative effect, I drilled down in Wikipedia's list of 15 major enacted laws for 2009 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#E...) and found that 8 were passed with large bipartisan majorities in both houses, 2 with large Senate bipartisan majorities.

[jellicle]

A history of Republican obstructionism:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_02/...

[littletimmy]

That's false, because the Democratic party today encapsulates both the old Republican and the old Democratic party. Hillary Clinton is essentially an Eisenhower Republican (if you place her into any European country she's in their conservative party), and Warren/Sanders are the left wing group.

The republican party of today is essentially a business lobby masquerading as a party. Place it into any European country, and it will be a far right extremist group.

[Gotadime]

Why does Europe always come up in these conversations, as if it's the litmus test for good policy? You do realize that's an entirely separate continent, with a different culture, history, and set of issues, right? Are you so ignorant to believe that the United States should actually be run like Europe?

To say that the Republican Party of today is a business lobby is an absurd and I'll-willed attempt to deliberately oversimplify, misinterpret, misrepresent, discredit, and ultimately slilence a legitimate political party that represents the thoughts and viewpoints of millions of American Citizens. Real people. Tax payers. Born here or abroad. Educated or self made. People that help make this country what it is.

I'm a registered Democrat and even I can't put up with this radical loyalist bullshit that aims to silence an entire portion of our population.

[littletimmy]

There is nothing ignorant in suggesting that the US should be run more like Europe. Northern European countries have higher living standards, and a pleasant lifestyle. The US has mass incarceration, poor healthcare, and gun violence.

The Republican party is financed by billionaires and corporations, which is perfectly in line with my comment that they are essentially a business lobby. What is one economic policy they have that is not pro-business?

That is not to say there are no good republican politicians; for example, John McCain is a good man. But the direction of the republican party today, with people like Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, is decidedly psychopathic. Scott Walker is a borderline fascist. This is not a "political party" because it doesn't stand for people.

[bsimpson]

Isn't "fairer" roughly coterminous with "more likely to get people I like elected"?

I don't trust one major political party to draw unbiased boundaries any more than I trust the other.

[jacobolus]

“Fairer” in this case means “composition of each state’s congressional delegation roughly represents the composition of political affiliation among the state’s citizens, and elections are reasonably competitive in areas with mixed support”. Currently, there is no question that the Republican Party has a significant structural advantage in Congress due to the gerrymandered district boundaries in states they controlled after the 2010 census. Moreover, most congressional districts are extremely safe for one party or the other, encouraging candidates to run for office on radicalized anti-compromise platforms. My personal preference would be to see districts drawn in a neutral way.

The green states in this picture use an independent commission to draw districts, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Redistri... It would be nice if more of the yellow states (redistricting controlled by the legislature) would switch to independent commissions.

[humanrebar]

I think there's no such thing as an independent commission. I'd rather it be part of the political process but improve the checks and balances somehow. Not sure what that looks like. Maybe explore special referendums or require more involvement from another branch of the government.

It's also worth pointing out that the courts have actually mandated gerrymandering at times to promote majority minority districts... which actually help create supermajority caucasian districts. We would need to stop this kind of gerrymandering or somehow establish the bright line between 'beneficial' (scare quotes for skepticism, not sarcasm) gerrymandering and corrupt gerrymandering.

[crdoconnor]

Any other election he'd have been right. This time there's Bernie Sanders, who is pretty much the first presidential candidate to support common sense laws.

He raises money from lots of small donors with interests like you and me rather than a few big donors with interests diametrically opposed to you and me.

[lewisl9029]

As awesome as Sanders is, I also happen to agree with Lessig in that campaign finance reform needs to take priority over every other issue.

Sanders is fighting for the right issues, but without campaign finance reform, every issue worth fighting for is going to face an almost impossible uphill battle.

[saalweachter]

Fun fact! Contra Lessig's plan to resign after magically gaining support for campaign finance reform from the two other branches of government, Presidents can do more than one thing per term! That means it is possible for a President Sanders to take action on both climate change and campaign finance reform, assuming the other two branches of government are amenable.

Amazing but true!

[komaromy]

Obama came into office with the same idea, then expended pretty much all of his political capital on passing the ACA. Lessig's plan seems to be on the same order.

[crdoconnor]

>Obama came into office with the same idea

Obama's ideas were never made very clear during his campaign. It was all "hope" and "change" and not a whole lot on policy specifics.

He then went and implemented the same neoliberal bullshit that George Bush pushed with a slightly different flavor.

[qrendel]

And that's a big part of what makes me continue to support Lessig over Sanders. Remembering how great Obama sounded in 2008, and seeing how that turned out, I give it a very high chance Sanders would be exactly the same.

Now we have a Nobel peace price winning president who regularly orders extrajudicial assassinations and prosecutes anyone blowing the whistle on the runaway national security/military-industrial complexes. So much for "the most transparent administration in history," the guy who was going to close Gitmo and stop the serial wars all across the Middle East.

[crdoconnor]

Sanders also wants to reform campaign finance.

Lessig should throw his weight behind Sanders if he wants to have an actual impact.

As it is, if he takes even a few votes away from Sanders he could end up giving away the primaries to, well, Clinton, who isn't going to do anything about campaign finance.

Progressives need to learn that being divided with people who basically agree with them is how they lose elections.

[mikegioia]

Sanders' self-claimed biggest issue is climate change, which in my opinion trumps campaign finance reform.

[aidos]

I think the point is, until there's funding reform, climate reform doesn't stand much of a chance. Similarly, once the funding reform is done, climate reform will get promoted.

[toyg]

The problem is, everyone has his personal list of priorities topped by "something without which everything else does not make sense".

* campaign reform: "how can you discuss anything when your counterpart is crooked?"

* climate change: "how can you discuss anything if your house is underwater?"

* fracking: "how can you discuss anything when people are causing earthquakes?"

* poverty: "how can you discuss anything when people are dying of hunger?"

* etc etc

One should be humble enough to support the candidate that is the closest to one's personal pet argument, but who also has a chance to actually get elected. Lessig has no chance whatsoever, simple as. He wants hard to be a Nader but clearly lacks even the moderate mainstream popularity Nader had.

[qrendel]

The Democratic nomination has basically always been guaranteed for Clinton. Sanders, though I certainly prefer him over her, is basically a sideshow to make it look like the Democrats actually support liberal issues and aren't just a moderate deviation from the one-party system. If they didn't run anyone besides Clinton many people would consider supporting a third party or independent candidate, but having Sanders around keeps them identifying with the DNC until he finally gives up the campaign and endorses Clinton.

Support for people who aren't likely to win the general election at least shows what issues are important to voters, forcing them to give some concessions to those issues in order not to lose their base to third parties and independents. That's the real power of supporting people like Lessig and Sanders, even though they clearly won't win. Supporting someone you disagree with more just because they're likely to win is truly "throwing your vote away" - it's working against your own policy preferences to give more votes to someone who doesn't even need them.

[crdoconnor]

American politics is pretty broken but it's not so broken that nothing is achievable without campaign finance reform.

[enjo]

Think of a startup whose founders spent 70% of their time raising money, they would never get anything done.

That's a bad example. For even a relatively early stage startup, raising money is the actual job description for a typical startup CEO. They probably spend more than 70% of their time on it.

It doesn't invalidate your point at all, however. Lawmakers are not startup CEO's. By providing every incentive to simply raise more money to ensure further employment, we've created just the worst possible system for functional government.

[AlwaysBCoding]

yeah like a five person team who's CEO spends 70% of time fundraising is probably fine. But an ENTIRE team that spends 70% of their time fundraising perpetually would be about as effective as Congress actually is.

[crdoconnor]

Congresspeople have staffers who do not fundraise.

[WildUtah]

"The MRA for each Representative is calculated based on three components, including personnel, which is the same for each Member ($944,671 for each Member in 2014)"

"Each Member may use the MRA to employ no more than 18 permanent employees, a level that has remained unchanged for nearly four decades. A Member may employ up to four additional [part-time] employees "[0]

So each congressman can hire 18 people for about a million dollars total, including both district and DC staff and not including himself. That's a good size startup. Congressmen who do spend a lot of time fundraising (not all of them -- hundreds in safe districts don't bother) are like the CEO of that office raising the money while staffers do the work at his direction.

[0]http://library.clerk.house.gov/reference-files/114_20150106_...

[jensen123]

> Members of Congress spend 70% of their time raising money.

Why do they do this? Because the politicians who spend the most money on advertising generally win the elections, right? I'm wondering if what we're seeing here is the failure of democracy with universal suffrage. Most of the voters don't seem to be independent thinkers. They could have voted for politicians who haven't been "bought". But they don't. For example, there are other political parties out there - Green Party, Libertarian Party etc., but almost nobody votes for those.

[aggie]

Lack of independent thinking may indeed be a problem, but the reason for a two-party system is mostly due to the mechanics of our plurality voting system [1]. People don't vote for third parties because voting for the lesser evil with the best shot to win produces a better outcome than voting for true preferences that are likely to lose.

This problem of plurality mechanics could be largely addressed by instant runoff voting [2], which allows people to vote for their true preferences without fear of throwing their vote away. Of course the people in power don't want to make it harder to retain power, so getting something like this implemented is very difficult without a referendum.

This is just my speculation, but it seems that a two-party system removes most of the incentive for pursuing nuanced, independent thought. The depth of the decision you have to make is choosing one team or the other, and defaulting to their stances on most issues, or by a mix of resignation and cognitive dissonance, ignoring the areas of disagreement. And once you've made the decision for which team to be on (or inherited from your parents), it's usually set-it-and-forget-it.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

[throwaway13337]

This is more a problem with vote distribution.

The parties outside the main two cannot win because they're always going to be a minority. If a minority could still hold a minority of the seats for getting a minority of the votes, the landscape would be vastly different.

Instead, we have an average vote system based on geographic region that can only allow for major parties to hold seats.

This is not the case in all democracies - most european parliaments have more than two parties because of the difference in the way minority votes are handled.

This is a failure of US-flavor representative democracy.

[Chathamization]

But we have primaries, where we get to choose who those candidates will be. It makes sense to winnow down choices from a larger group until you get to the top 2, and then choose between the top two. You still have lots of choices if you look at the process from the beginning, not just from the very last part of the selection process.

[vezzy-fnord]

Appointing electors is universally FPTP in the United States, sans a couple of states. Do primaries use a Condorcet method, or...?

[Chathamization]

Well, I'm saying that general elections in the US tend to be functionally the equivalent of run-off elections in many other places. For instance, in France you generally have candidates that weren't in a competitive primary run in an election, then have a runoff with the top two candidates (the Socialists seem to be introducing primaries for presidential candidates though). So you have an election, then the top two candidates compete in another FPTP election. In the US we have a (primary) election, then the top two candidates from each side (except for in places like California) compete in a FPTP election.

In the US, this differs state by state (California has their jungle primary system, some cities have IRV) and in Europe country by country and party by party (as I mentioned, the French socialists seem interested in have presidential primaries).

[jensen123]

I suppose you have a valid point. I have one question, though: aren't political TV ads actually illegal in most European countries?

[toyg]

European political campaigns are usually cheaper than US ones, but they're by no means cheap in absolute terms. We have corruption scandals here too... before '92, a lot of political parties were almost entirely funded by either the US or the USSR; they've been economically struggling ever since.

[SixSigma]

We have Party Political Broadcasts in the UK, which are scheduled and appear in tv listings one party at a time. They are usually after the news, but not always, and regular programmes are shifted by 5-10 minutes to accommodate them.

[JetSpiegel]

At least I never seen anything like what Jon Stewart showed. There are political TV ads during the official campaigns, but that's two weeks before the elections and it's just 1h where the ads run all in a big block.

[techdragon]

A big part of the problem is voter turnout.

If you make voting a requirement, like paying your taxes. It changes the environment around an election. You spend less time and money trying to convince apathetic voters to take time out of their work day to vote.

[vezzy-fnord]

You have the right to vote, not the obligation to vote. The latter is a clear coercive practice and free speech violation. It forces the uninformed to cast votes on issues they have no background in. It also criminalizes the legitimate protest activity of abstention.

[throwaway13337]

Voting hardly matters when there are two parties available representing largely the same company and pac interests.

I know this is unpopular to say, but if you'd like to make a difference in governance, you have to pay for it.

[jensen123]

Isn't voting a requirement in Argentina? Look at the politicians they're electing...

[Chathamization]

Pretty much this. In this day and age, it's easy for people to ignore the advertising and simply search online for the candidates positions, their history, which groups support them, etc. This probably takes less than an hour.

Granted, most people don't, and most people probably don't even know the names of the people running besides those in the biggest races (they might know the presidential or mayoral candidates, but they often don't know the state senate or state party candidates).

I disagree about third parties though - it usually makes much more sense to try to make changes during the primary, then trying to make them with a third party (there are a few exceptions, of course).

[rayiner]

People don't vote for those parties not because they aren't independent thinkers, but because they don't want what those parties are selling. They don't want some libertarian wonderland without consumer protection laws or Social Security. In broad strokes, they want what we already have, with small tweaks.

[djhn]

> Members of Congress spend 70% of their time raising money. They're not lawmakers, they're professional fundraisers.

> they would never get anything done

You will have a hard time convincing HN that what US needs are more laws, especially at a rate limited by time available to politicians for writing them!

Broadly speaking limits on campaign donations are fairly small (Max $5k) and average donation sums ($100-200) are extremely small. You will need anywhere from 2-8 million to run for Congress, about 25 million to run for Senate.

As an entrepreneur, what do you call it when you raise capital of several million from hundreds or thousands of investors? That's right, you call it revenue, and you call those investors your customers.

It's a weird model, but the US system makes a fundraising politician to personally talk to thousands and thousands of his constituents and reach out to 10-fold that figure to gauge interest. That has a significant positive side-effect of the politician being intimately familiar with their biggest concerns and often even smaller, local or personal problems that need fixing. After all, if you want to be a great salesman, you better know the customer very well.

[AlwaysBCoding]

The "limit" on campaign donations is a complete farce though. Let's look at Jeb Bush. Jeb stated multiple times that he wasn't running for president in 2016, and instead started a Super PAC that let him raise uncapped campaign donations, and ultimately raised over $100 million. Then he announces that he had a change of heart, was indeed going to run for president, and gave control of his Super PAC to a friend of his. And now he has $100 million to play with, fuck that $5k limit, and the voters/peasants who would donate it.

[djhn]

Yes, SuperPACs and presidential races are another beast altogether. Like I said, I was talking about a general case, since you referred to legislators, which by definition excludes presidential candidates.

SuperPACs are difficult to play the devil's advocate for. They are a feature of running a widespread democratic campaign in a big country, where the ad impressions on voters are prohibitively expensive because of said voters purchasing power.

SuperPACs have very lax limits on contribution, but they need to be firewalled from the main campaign and cannot coordinate spending, and their power to target their spending is very limited. As far as I can tell, this firewall is as good as any such structure required by law and audited (e.g. finance, consulting, etc.). That is to say, it works okay, but not great.

Full disclosure, I am involved in campaigning professionally (not US) and was an independent OSCE observer of the 2012 presidential elections in the US when working for my country's parliament.

[humanrebar]

> SuperPACs are difficult to play the devil's advocate for.

I'll take a shot. They could be megaphones for oligarchs, sure. But they can also be fledgling political parties. Or at least non-governmental counter-movements within a party. I mean, that's basically what Lessig has been doing, right?

[jules]

The $5k limit is irrelevant. PACs can funnel an unlimited amount of money into campaigns as long as they are "independent". Besides, average Joe certainly does not even have $5k to spend on a campaign, so yea if it were true that the $5k limit is relevant then the politician would have to reach out to thousands of rich people. But even that isn't true.

[chillwaves]

The government should issue everyone $5k to spend on politics (and only politics), then it would be democratic.

[jellicle]

Congratulations, you've invented Larry Lessig's idea. He noted that $50 per voter would be enough to swamp the contributions from the billionaires.

[fyolnish]

That's just voting

[dangerlibrary]

There is no requirement in the US that your donors are your constituents. Amass sufficiently many people to whom the maximum contribution is a trivial sum of money, and donate to every campaign. Done.

[onewaystreet]

> This is why common sense laws that have majority support from the voters (gun control, marijuana legalization etc...) never get the traction they should. The funders don't want them, and they have the final say, not the voters.

The idea that most politicians are just empty shells that do whatever their funders tell them is just wrong. The truth is that it's cheaper and much more effective for funders to give money to politicians that already support their positions.

Lessig believes that if big money is taken out of politics that politicians will suddenly vote for fixing climate change, pass gun control, etc. But they wont because the ones that are against these things aren't against them because they are told to be, they are against them because they genuinely believe that they are bad policies. It's ideology, not money, that drives them.

[Riesling]

Ok, even if this was the case, I fail to see the relevance of it?

The effect would be the same. Less money for candidates that vote against fixing the climate. Hence less chances for them winning in the elections.

[icebraining]

His political ideas have little traction because they're fallacious? I'm pretty sure that already counts as a rare achievement.