Any individual who has poked even a finger into the current of campaign politics has discovered an inundation of fund-raising emails, letters and phone calls from the NATIONAL COMMITTEE (RNC, DNC) of each party. One assumes that this cash contribution is a voter’s right. However, the real campaign cash balance is maintained by special interests like corporations and investors who are the real source of hundreds of millions in donations to campaign financing.

One of the more benign exposures of this plutocracy is when the email says, “We’ve found a 600 percent match for your donation!” Who among us can match six times a national fund-raising effort? To mariner, this is just a way for candidates to hide big money that otherwise would be openly contributed from Political Action Committees (PACs) and corporations – in other words, a favor or policy expectation is the real purpose – not just a citizen vote.

Mariner has challenged the concept of national fund-raising many times on the blog. Consequently, he will not go into elaborate philosophical and pragmatic explanations of why special interest fund raising is destructive to democracy. Simply, this is what must be done to improve democracy as a tool to manage the peoples’ governments:

• Federal, nationwide election campaigns are funded only by Federal tax dollars; the Federal Government pays for all Federal election campaigns. This includes constraints on private and local fund-raising for nationwide offices.
• State, district, county and local campaigns may be funded only by entities within the jurisdiction of the specific office to be elected.
• All elections, Federal, state and local, are limited to a six month time limit. Except within this time limit, no funds may be used for any purpose associated with elections including television, postal mail, shipping, telephone or any other source of communication.
• Voting should allow electronic voting authorized by an algorithm based on identifiers within driver’s license, passport and personal banking. While this may seem unfair to those who live on the bottom fringe of society, their abuse is a separate issue that would be addressed in an effort for everyone to participate equally in today’s Internet world – including electronic voting.

So, if the reader is of like mind, send donations to . . .

Ancient Mariner