RALEIGH – This may shock you. It may disturb you. It may challenge the very foundations of your belief system. But it must be said: there is a bill being discussed during the 2006 legislative sessions that would take a bad idea and make it worse.
The bad idea is “public financing” of campaigns. That’s what proponents used to call programs in which governments collect funds and disperse them to politicians for use in election campaigns. Some years ago, bitten by the marketing bug, advocates came up with a new name, “voter-owned elections.” While its pizzazz factor may be up for debate, the term certainly suffers from the malady of disingenuousness.
For one thing, voters and taxpayers are not synonymous. Many taxpayers don’t vote. Some voters have essentially no net tax liability, when you compare what they pay to what they receive in government transfer payments. Unless the proposal is to charge people for the privilege of voting, and use the proceeds to finance campaigns, it is improperly named (and, of course, such a policy would be unconstitutional and absurd).
For another thing, despite the not-so-sly inference, current elections are not “owned” by private donors exercising their freedom to associate with and support the candidates and causes of their choice. Elections are complicated events, affected by a range of individual and collective actions. To suggest that their outcomes are dictated by the “well-heeled” and other groups bearing quasi-Marxist labels is to misstate reality. Money obviously plays a role in allowing some campaigns to communicate effectively with voters – remember, that’s what campaign cash is, a resource converted into political speech – but other campaigns with large amounts of cash still fall short. Beware of simplistic explanations here. News-media coverage of candidates also plays a significant role in political outcomes. Does that make them “media-owned elections”?
In 2002, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted a public-financing system for candidates running for state supreme court and court of appeals. Oddly described by some opinion writers as having “worked well,” the system was destined to fail – and quickly did. Originally portrayed as relying only on voluntary support – a $3 check-off on state tax returns and an opportunity for state attorneys to contribute $50 a year – the funding system ran dry. Less than 12 percent of attorneys participated. About half that percentage of NC taxpayers did. State government resorted to compulsion. The $50 “contribution” has now become an extra licensing fee for attorneys. And in 2004, the General Assembly transferred nearly $1 million from the General Fund, from mandatory taxes and fees, to the cash-strapped judicial-campaign fund.
As my JLF colleague Daren Bakst put it in a recent report on the subject, to force North Carolinians to finance the candidacies of individuals with whom they disagree, or perhaps even find abhorrent, is “constitutionally problematic and at a minimum unethical.” Yet some cite the 2002 legislation as a precedent for a new plan to import “voter-owned elections” into other races, including the state legislature itself.
I suggest we move in an entirely different direction. Let’s adopt freedom-zoned elections. First, abolish all public-financing schemes that attempt to subsidize campaigns or restrict individuals from saying what they want, when they want, with resources freely given. Second, require immediate, 24-hour disclosure of all campaign contributions, no exceptions or excuses. Third, address the real barriers to political entry and competition in North Carolina – starting with a redistricting system that provides most incumbents, of both parties, with gerrymandered sinecures. And fourth, if judges raising private funds from willing supporters is a prospect too revolting to contemplate, much less revive, let’s get rid of judicial elections and adopt some kind of appointive system.
That would take a bad idea and make it irrelevant.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.