I'll also mention that our biggest challenge to scaling this is money. If you know people who would be interested in donating, please hit me up at jim@counterpac.org. You can also send PayPal donations there if you're so inclined!
> Why do our leaders have to spend half their time raising money? Why is a former cable company lobbyist running the FCC? Why has Wall Street largely returned to risky business as usual after the taxpayers bailed them out?
> I think it’s because the power of the private sector is on the wrong side. Innovative startups are not fixing this problem. In fact the innovative startups are growing up to join trade associations and lobby Congress, just like every Fortune 500 company does. It’s understandable. Companies have opinions about their issues. But it’s gotten out of control.
How do you see this interacting with Larry Lessig's MayDay PAC?
The message is slightly different, but the tactics seems identical. I'm always for the experimentation that comes with a new approach, but competition for funds and candidate engagement here could hurt.
Mayday is supporting candidates that promise to vote for campaign finance reform.
CounterPAC is pressuring candidates to run their races cleanly . We don't care about their legislative positions. Just how they run their race - which is immediately measurable and actionable.
Republicans have a hard time with their party leadership if they sign on for reform legislation. They are pretty free to run their race however they want, as long as they win.
Next time you make a donation that could be disclosed, are you prepared to lose your job over it?
Disclosing the sources of campaign funding is not all roses. There are several groups who use that information to intimidate doners. They go after their careers, their businesses, their families, their reputations. They create maps of where "the opposition" lives, and then let the lunatic fringe on their side do what comes naturally to them.
In Australia there's a fixed amount below which donations may be anonymous. It means that if you want to donate more and can face the scrutiny, you can. If you don't want the scrutiny, you can still donate without being seen to.
I was curious about what was written, so I thought I would respond after a quick Google search.
I assume the losing your job part is referring to the Mozilla CEO news somewhat recently. I thought it didn't really need any research as it is posted about here often enough.
Yes, one CEO candidate lost his job for a donation. Let's balance that with the damage done by routine corruption - we have to strike a balance between transparency and privacy.
The whole point about disclosure is to enable feedback. The intended feedback may be for people to be able to make informed decisions about who is funding a candidate, but disclosure also enables other kinds of feedback. It allows coercion to be applied to people (donors) once their identities are known. Brenden Eich is one example.
The ability to donate anonymously is an important firebreak. It protects those with minority opinions. It also protects people in general from those who think that coercion is an acceptable means to achieve an end.
I should not have to worry that my boss will see that I gave a donation to his pet political cause in order to keep my job. Likewise, I shouldn't have to worry that my boss disagrees with some cause that I have donated to and fires me.
I also shouldn't have to worry that one of these reprehensible groups who believe in bullying and coercion might decide to make an example out of me just because I supported the side of a cause they disagree with.
Shouldn't a political debate be more about ideas than the people who are involved?
Disclosure seems to enable a kind of intolerance, a kind of "guilty by association" kind of thinking that really has no place in civil society.
> Shouldn't a political debate be more about ideas than the people who are involved?
What if the idea is "I'd like a big contract for my construction company"
Or, "I'd like favorable regulation for my cable broadband provider".
This isn't just a debating society. It's a market with winners and losers. Donor harassment is a pretty abstract problem, with Brenden Eich as pretty much the only example. Corruption is routine, massive, and very concrete.
Having my boss be able to tell how I contributed to a political campaign is not an abstract problem. It's been a big enough problem in the past that there were laws passed to try to prevent it (see for example, the Hatch act).
Mr Eich is the only example I mentioned. In just this one political cause (prop 8) he was one of many people who were bullied.
How about Scott Eckern? How about Jose Nunez?
And, for each example that has been made, how many people choose to remain silent? How does that get measured? Making high profile examples out of people is very cost effective and efficient. It demoralizes and defunds your opposition.
I find whole idea that it is somehow acceptable to enable the bullying of individuals by extremist groups to be deeply unsettling. Anonymous donations prevent this sort of abuse very simply and effectively.
If it's corruption you're after, then go after that. Either limit the power that the elected officials have (term limits, etc) or investigate them.
People with money and power will always find ways to buy certain politicians. If one way is blocked, another will open up. Just look at how many politicians have cushy K street jobs once they retire (provided they do their masters bidding while in office). No campaign donations to trace or disclose.
Am I the only one who's uncomfortable with the idea that political speech is kosher, but responding to political speech in a way which is "bullying" is not?
I feel like we should do more to separate the abusive harassment (which is clearly not okay) from other real-life consequences, maybe including losing friends or a job, that come with holding and furthering a political belief. The latter seems like it could plausibly be a feature of a well-functioning political discourse.
Why would you think that firing an employee over a political contribution they made or did not make would be in any way acceptable?
Well functioning political discourse is, above all, tolerant. A hallmark of non-functioning politics is the use of coercion.
How would you feel if you worked for one company, and they required you to fund a certain cause. Then, you get fed up with that, but you're now on the officially reported doner list for that cause (which your employer used to ensure compliance), and another employer says they won't hire you based on a simple web search of causes you've "supported" in the past?
> Why would you think that firing an employee over a political contribution they made or did not make would be in any way acceptable?
Why would you think making a political contribution is in any way acceptable? Because we live in a free society. You can't force someone to employ you. We've generally outlined narrow exceptions to that rule, and this generally isn't one.[0]
If you don't support a business's politics, if you don't think they'll use their money for good, you have the right not to give them yours. It doesn't seem at all intuitive to me that that right should disappear when the money's moving the other way.
(Of course that presumes a well-functioning market for labor... If (hah) that doesn't exist, we can only expect workers to be exploited in millions of different ways, large and small, and this is still not a good hill to die on.)
[0] I (and many HNers) happen to live in one of the few US states where political retaliation by employers is actually banned, and while I broadly appreciate the sentiment, I'm not at all sure it's morally superior in the way you're trying to claim. Look at what a huge problem liberal protection of political speech caused in Citizens United, for example.
> Shouldn't a political debate be more about ideas than the people who are involved?
You don't need money to talk about ideas. The enormous sums poured into American campaigns are about something, but I'm pretty sure that something isn't the best way to run the country.
Give candidates the same amount of space to make the case for their position, like with ballot initiatives. Have them do it in writing - it makes for better decisionmaking, and it makes candidates more accountable. Maybe put these things on a leaflet that's mailed to voters, a publicly-administered one - charge the candidates at cost if you like, it's not going to be a big expense. That ought to be enough. The sound and the fury of modern political campaigns does not signify a better government.
Long story short, the Scott Walker recall petition was public, and people were targeted if they signed it. There's a good piece on NPR's This American Life about it.
That Scott Walker is in the office now means either 1) targeting isn't bad enough to not be able to win a governor race or 2) the story about targeting isn't credible enough - in other words, people discount it enough (not enough proof of acting) so that it doesn't matter.
A decent idea, but the anecdotal evidence of success seems like feel-good fluff, and not actually relevant.
CounterPAC seems like it's trying to create a spending arms race, but with the basis in simple disclosure, rather than political views. However, that the corporations have vastly higher resources and incentives to spend. Unfortunately, it seems trivial for firms to create a Counter-CounterPAC with the aim at depleting the resources of any successful PAC with these intentions.
From my perspective, this is a long run failing strategy, but has the possibly to succeed in the short run. It would need to hit the reps, and hit hard. Then immediately (within a few election cycles) turn and pass strong disclosure laws to create a change in the way the game works.
Wait, is it irrelevant fluff? Or will it work in the short term?
You say "the corporations" as if it's some secret cabal. Most spending is done by trade associations, not corporations directly. Trade associations like to get their legislation through. But they don't run the show.
Money only matters to the extent that it buys ads that move voters. And there's only a limited amount that matters in an election. If you take a house race and outspend your opponent $10 Billion to $1 Billion, but have a worse message, you will lose.
The total cost of the all federal elections in 2012, including the presidential, was around $8 billion dollars. That's a big number. It's almost a billion dollars more than the worldwide market for adult diapers:
> Money only matters to the extent that it buys ads that move voters. And there's only a limited amount that matters in an election. If you take a house race and outspend your opponent $10 Billion to $1 Billion, but have a worse message, you will lose.
I found this dubious, so I went googling. I felt I ought to share what I found:
Thanks - my point is actually narrower. It's that if both sides have enough money to saturate the voters with their message, additional money is of low marginal utility. Otherwise we'd have Meg Whitman as our governor in CA. She outspent Jerry Brown by nearly 5x in 2010, and lost by 13 points.
Right, so i said the idea was decent, but the anecdotal evidence of long term effectiveness as an overall strategy, with n=1, was irrelevant.
I only say "the corporations" as those entities who attempt to participate in the gift economy laid out in Lessig's "Republic Lost." I do not think a meta trade group reminiscent of ALEC or the Chamber of Commerce would be very unlikely if there was evidence that this strategy was effective.
While i agree with your point about swaying voters, as well as what i've read about Levitt's work on the subject, with the assent of self-selective media, Fox News and other various media outlets of questionable independence, it seems that there is much influence in coordinating talking points than there is in ads alone. Maybe i'm a bit paranoid about that, but with the deterioration of a diversity of media firms, i really don't think so.
The issue about billions of good money available amounts seems to lack the reason there is so much spending. The opportunity cost of a coal firm fighting potential crippling regulations would be essentially zero. If they stand to loose significantly in certain elections, then they can clearly spend exactly an equal amount to stop it.
On the side of good, there are no hard and fast numbers to budget, thus an coordination problem arises on who ought to spend what.
Like i said before though, i think lack of knowledge of the effectiveness of such an organization is it's greatest asset. If politicians are suddenly hit with a big stick, they may be out for the count. If they know what they are up against, they can probably raise money to counter-counter accordingly.
I think one possible way of fixing that counter-counter-PAC problem is this: Instead of focusing on the politicians themselves, trying to convince them to only accept money from disclosed sources, one could focus on convincing the existing corporations/PACs to only donate to politicians that disclose all their sources. That way you end up getting the politicians on board, and you're not at an arms race with anyone. Instead you're using the money from whoever you manage to get on your side to your cause's favor.
It's really about informing the public, so a counter-counter-PAC may not have an equivalent response. Of course we're getting into information-wars territory.
The thing I've always found intriguing is that the tricks used by politicians and parties to hide the sources of their campaign financing feel like they were adapted from organised crime. (Which politics may well be, but that's another matter.)
* Make sure that individual donations are small enough to avoid the source reporting
* Cycle larger donations through entities that themselves do not need to report their sources
In any other context these patterns would trigger all kinds of money laundering alarms, but in politics it's considered business as usual.
I'm always amazed at how people want to fight corruption not really understanding that corruption is inherent to politics and government. You can't fight it. It's like fighting aging with plastic surgery. Sure, it may look good on the surface and it may even make you feel good psychologically, for a while. But you're still aging. Best you can do is accept that and lead a healthy lifestyle.
So, if you try fight corruption, it simply becomes more obscure. Corruption exists purely because governments and institutions exist. If you didn't have those, you wouldn't need to bribe some third party in order to be able to establish a business relationship with someone else (e.g. get a licence, permit, etc).
> You can't fight it. It's like fighting aging with plastic surgery.
It's more like fighting crime. Aging is an irreversible process that happens to one person. Crime and corruption are background processes that happen to societies.
You can fight it. You can't eliminate it, of course.
Crime too. If you look at what are most of the crimes that are committed in any given country, it quickly becomes obvious that those are mostly victimless crimes or crimes that are invoked by governments declaring something to be illegal (while it harms no one): like drugs being illegal provokes a lot of violence, gang culture etc. The only true systematic source of evil in any country is its government. Without it, you'd still have bad things happening, but it won't be on the same level.
What I'm saying is, governments foster violent crime by criminalizing many peaceful things. The best thing you can do to dramatically decrease violent crime rates is get rid of governments.
You can't get rid of governments though. People would spontaneously form states either to protect themselves, or to take advantage of the opportunity to set up protection rackets and tax others.
I find it amusing how people who dislike governments rarely move to failed states. You can easily move to an area without regulation or taxes but there not actually places you want to be.
A failed state doesn't mean absence of government. Similarly to how if you burn a church, it wouldn't make all the people in the village atheists.
What people who dislike governments can realistically do is not comply and ask for no permission. Don't pay taxes, use Bitcoin, ignore stupid laws, don't send children to government schools. Peacefully disobey.
Where? Rules instituted by force of arms (which you refer to as "regulations") and extortion backed by same (which you refer to as "taxes") are global. Short of war, Antarctica or establishing a seastead, you cannot escape them, period. And in the latter two cases, you stand a very high chance of simply inviting war at any rate.
My impression from a small european country is that most politicians will happily damage the tax payer for an amount roughly 2 orders of magnitude higher than the corresponding bribe, whether by taking a cut when privatizations happen or by spending ludicrous amounts on infrastructure projects or military hardware, or even by investing taxpayers' money badly on purpose to benefit banks (who pay bribes).
The only remedy I see is more transparency (all contracts, offers etc. must be made public) - but recent trends go in the other direction with secret agreements, more direct democracy (immediate direct public votes to prevent unpopular political decisions) and harsh punishment when officials are caught taking bribes (the Chinese go to extremes though - death penalty sometimes - with no apparent effect).
Long-term, very optimistic vision: replace corrupt political decision makers by AI, but I fear human tricksters will be able to take advantage of that too.
Fighting corruption is like putting a tax on it; it disincentivises it, makes it less efficient. If you allowed people to openly bribe politicians you would get much worse laws. Every bit of "obscurity" we force on them costs, makes corruption more expensive and less worthwhile.
Interesting idea, and I hope it works in the both short term and long term.
As an outsider (and just overall uninformed about politics), since CounterPAC is transparent, is it an additional incentive for politicians to be associated with CounterPAC? And an "anti-incentive"(?) to refuse it, since people will know that they (likely) took dark money?
Jim great idea. How about a extension of this idea of picking close races and trying to get the candidates to accept no money at all with the threat to go thermonuclear on the first candidate that defects?
Can somebody explain me why a democracy allows for donations at all?
Donations will clearly skew the political landscape towards the people who have money to donate.
And those people are more likely to donate with an expected value. So they will try to skew the politics in their favour.
Why would it be bad to forbid any kind of political donation for established parties.
I see the need to fund a grow new parties, but established parties should get by with the money they receive from the government.
In a democracy, if I have a political opinion, I must be allowed to express it. It follows that I must be allowed to pay a spokesperson to express it on my behalf, and it follows from that that I must be allowed to fund an organization with the mandate of expressing it.
That's all SCOTUS' Citizens United ruling was about; there does not seem to be a reasonable way to limit political spending across the board without at some point allowing an unconstitutional restriction on political speech, and that's anathema to our society. (And as CU has demonstrated, the distinction between that and unregulated campaign donations is academic in practice.)
That's not to say that there's no way to draw a line, but so far the anti-finance crowd has been largely unwilling to engage with this argument, and none has been readily forthcoming.
Let's not presume this is all about "free speech". The Supreme Court has placed restrictions on free speech that society has come to accept. (Not that I agree with them).
For example, the supreme court has made exceptions to the 1st amendment for obscenity, of all things.
Now that we can recognize the Supreme Court has made exceptions to first amendment, it's fair to dispute whether paid political contributions should qualify as free speech or if it should be forbidden as an exception.
The fact that Citizens United already happened should not stop people from disputing it, or the precedent it set.
speech is unprotected if (1) ... and (2) ... and (3) "the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value"
Political speech especially is sacrosanct in US jurisprudence. It's widely held as the reason we even need free speech. On the balance of protected speech, having a legitimate political message is not a thumb so much as a foot on the scale.
If you grant that money spent to promote a political message counts as political expression, by limiting it we're talking about censoring a lot of speech, across the entirety of political discourse. You will not find any restriction on any speech anywhere in law that even approaches it in scope. And we'll be censoring exactly the speech we feel is most important not to. This will not fly.
So, you need to either come up with a reason not to consider money spent to promote a message as an expression of that message, or come up with a justification for why, despite this being speech with a valid political message, it is vitally necessary that it be censored.
Either of those could plausibly be argued, but the arguments I've seen are mainly along the lines of "Money obviously isn't speech!" and "Clearly, the rich shouldn't be allowed to speak louder than the poor!" In the eyes of Constitutional law, those things are neither obvious nor clear.
> Why would it be bad to forbid any kind of political donation for established parties.
Everybody is responding to your question with the generic "free speech" answer. It needs to be fleshed out so everyone can understand it.
What political donations are used for is to buy advertising and get on television, which politicians need to do to get elected. Now suppose we ban political donations whatsoever. Cui bono?
You haven't changed the need for politicians to get their faces on the TV in order to get elected. So now what determines whether they get on TV? They can still buy advertising themselves, of course, but only if the candidate is rich. Not really what we were going for. And even then, who has more power in this scenario? A millionaire candidate who can personally afford to buy some TV spots or the billionaire who owns the local TV stations? And if the prospect of handing Comcast/MSNBC and News Corp that much control over elections doesn't make the point sufficiently, imagine what happens when MSNBC, Fox and CNN are purchased by Exxon, Chevron and BP.
You can't stop people from buying airtime. It only consolidates the power of the people selling it. What you can do is public financing of elections. Public financing doesn't restrict anyone's speech -- the candidate can buy the same ad with money from the treasury as with money from coal producers. But the candidates are going to work for whoever is funding them; if that isn't the general public then it will be defense contractors and Monsanto.
The answer is simple: these are not democracies. Pretty much the only democratic aspect in nowadays "representative democracies" is that every 5 years you get to chose which of 2 leaders you prefer to govern your state/city. That's a little light to call the whole system a "democracy".
You'll never make sense of politics if you don't get that.
An intrinsic part of being a democracy involves people being free to support a cause they want to, including financially.
It's not as if rich people are going to stop spending to influence electoral results in favour of candidates whose policies work in their interests if they're banned from handing the money over directly and transparently.
Well don't underestimate the power of the poor : they are more numerous so a candidate with less money but with a program oriented toward them may eventually win.
I know I'm being pedantic, but where is the game theory? The threat of campaign spending as a device to induce a more optimal equilibrium? If that's the case everyone uses game theory, no?
I just wish the article had been clear about that. Instead it just rambled for several paragraph, and replaced the threat with a vague statement about how you'd "hold them accountable", which could mean a dozen things.
Also, I concur with the GP except that I agree this is a use of game theory, but only in the trivial sense that any offer of reward to those you like (as used by other PACs) is game theory.
"If one of you informs on the other, he'll get off with a 1 year sentence, and the other goes to prison for 10 years. If neither informs, you both go to prison for 5 years."
Does that sound like game theory, or just carrot-and-stick?
Here are other examples of game theory in real-life. I'd say we're in the same category:
