[giantg2]

Exactly what reforms do you want? If you want first amendment restrictions you can look into passing another amendment. That's really how that's supposed to work. The logic behind the ruling is fine if you actually dig into it - funding is speech, government funding of some candidates and not others dilutes the speech of some citizens and effectively compels speech from other citizens through the government. A better approach would be restricting all political advertising to some government provided platform. This would avoid the wasteful government matching.

[everforward]

That line of logic is utterly insane even at a glance because it argues that citizens cannot be taxed for something they don’t support.

Shall we ask the DEA when they’ll be issuing refunds?

“Diluting” speech is equally incoherent. The presidents state of the nation address drags people away from my Twitter feed, so the government is diluting my speech. If the argument is just that the government can’t do anything that would make a citizen less heard, the government ceases to function because practically everything they do is more consequential than any citizens opinion.

The First Amendment doesn’t even say anything about being heard. It is a right to speak, not a right to be heard. Funding a candidate does not remove the right or ability for other candidates to speak.

> A better approach would be restricting all political advertising to some government provided platform.

This is not even close to passing even a cursory First Amendment analysis. Telling people they can’t advertise on Facebook/Google/etc is absolutely a First Amendment issue. It is literal speech, and the right to express it is abridged by location. This will never happen without an amendment.

[giantg2]

"This will never happen without an amendment."

When did I ever argue that it should?

The main flaw with the funding match is that campaign spending is already very wasteful and we shouldn't be trying to match that waste with tax dollars.

But you could go read Davis and the other case history about the undue restrictions and how a candidates own speech is constrained by matching schemes.

[everforward]

> When did I ever argue that it should?

You didn’t, but I would also presume that reason dictates solutions be practical. Modifying the First Amendment is so far out of the Overton Window that I struggle to even call it a potential solution.

> But you could go read Davis and the other case history about the undue restrictions and how a candidates own speech is constrained by matching schemes.

That is not what Davis says; I would encourage you to re-read it or perhaps read it for the first time. Davis doesn’t even have to do with matching schemes, it has to do with differing contribution limits from third parties depending on a candidates own spending.

It’s still profoundly dumb, to the point where I feel worse off for having read it. Apparently a candidate being wealthy enough to bankroll orders of magnitude more funding than an opponent does not create “an appearance of corruption”, despite magnitudes of evidence on how effective advertising is. Alito was either an idiot or corrupt; probably the latter given his rank.

[giantg2]

"Modifying the First Amendment is so far out of the Overton Window that I struggle to even call it a potential solution."

So too with the court reform suggestion.

"Davis doesn’t even have to do with matching schemes,"

No, but it is the case law that the appeals court felt compelled to follow with respect to matching schemes and later upheld in the combined appeal.

"Apparently a candidate being wealthy enough to bankroll orders of magnitude more funding than an opponent does not create “an appearance of corruption”, despite magnitudes of evidence on how effective advertising is."

If it's that effective and leading to poor outcomes, then regulate it like tobacco ads instead of forcing additional funding to a broken system. The majority of the political ads are intentionally deceptive anyways. We shouldn't be figuring how we can equitably fund the continuation of this shit, but how to reduce it overall.

[ETH_start]

The better solution is to continue respecting the First Amendment and not trying to restrict in any way, political speech, and instead reforming the electoral system so that the volume of speech one is able to output through the expenditure of financial resources does not have an impact on election outcomes.

[giantg2]

How so, and how is that different than my proposal in other comments?

[ETH_start]

Restricting political advertising to one platform would be a massive abrogation of the right to engage in political speech.

[giantg2]

The right as it is defined now, yes. The ability to restrict or redefine that right is still an option. See tobacco advertising and other harmful advertising that has been restricted.

Again, what are those electoral changes you believe will fix the issue?

[ETH_start]

So what I propose is completely different than what you're proposing, which is that you're proposing massively restricting the right to engage in political speech as we define it now.