[batterseapower]

Why is it that people support secret ballot, but not secret donation? Both are forms of political support, and making them public can in theory prevent people from expressing their true views. So why is the secrecy of one protected, but not the other?

[FrojoS]

My opinion:

In a democracy, ideally every one should have the same amount of voting power. Independent of social status, power and wealth.

Secret of vote, is there to prevent bribery and blackmail. Hence, even a poor and powerless person can vote, according to their heart.

In contrast, donations to politicians and parties, are an attempt to "buy" elections.

[VMG]

You could make it so that even the receiver of the donation doesn't know where the money comes from.

[hugh3]

I heard this idea somewhere else recently, and I think it's brilliant. Instead of limiting sizes of political donations, just make it impossible to track who gave 'em. Oh sure, you can still tell your favourite politician "Hey, I just gave you ten thousand dollars" but they can't possibly check.

Closing a few obvious loopholes: you should only be able to donate in certain nice round numbers ($10, $20, $50, $100, ... $10,000, $20,000) to avoid situations where you can tell a politician "Hey, the $15433.33 donation is from me" and have them confirm it. And it should be fuzzy in time, too -- politicians shouldn't know when a donation came in with resolution greater than a week or so.

It's great, because people are still free to support their favourite politicians as much as they like, but with greatly decreased possibility for corruption.

Politicians will, of course, hate it, so it'll never happen.

[VMG]

They don't even have to know the amount of the transactions. The "campaign donation bureau" can only releases monthly balances.

[unsigner]

It's like drugs and weapons: if you ban legal donations, you'll get a democracy funded by illegal donations.