Since House members are only elected for two years, I will assume the election campaign is about 6 months long, perhaps longer if there is a primary. Other countries do campaigns in a matter of weeks. It has been said that Congress members spend half their time dialing for dollars while they are in office, which is a huge waste of time. It could be claimed that the most important part of this entire process is the funding of elections, since that is when Representatives become beholden to donors, not voters. So in order to end the corruption of election campaigns wouldn't it make sense to end this legalized bribery at the center of the problem? Furthermore, taxpayers are already paying all the expenses for 30 years of the Representatives' lives, except for 6 months at the beginning. The following timeline illustrates the point:
For comparison, the average Senator is elected at age 54 and serves for 13 years until age 67. They then collect a pension until average life expectancy of 78.8 or 11.8 more years. This total taxpayer support is for 24.8 years. Senators are elected every six years, so their campaigns might be expected to last somewhat longer, perhaps for a year or more. This is illustrated by the following chart:
So to summarize, taxpayers are already supporting Representatives for nearly 30 years, but they refuse to pay for the 6 months of the election campaign, and taxpayers already pay for nearly 25 years of a Senator's expenses, but refuse to pay for the first 1 year during the election campaign. Since the funding of elections determines their behavior for the rest of their service in office (lobbyists not withstanding), wouldn't it make sense to mandate taxpayer financing of election campaigns in order to eliminate the legalized bribery that we have now? Furthermore, the election campaign is arguably the most important part of the process. When looked at in this way, campaign finance is a tiny portion of the time that taxpayers support representative government, and should obviously be publicly funded, as is the entirety of the rest of the process. Voters become cynical when they see that nothing is done to change it, and they feel powerless and stop voting. But that is the point isn't it?
(Article changed on December 19, 2017 at 00:00)
(Article changed on December 19, 2017 at 00:04)
(Article changed on December 19, 2017 at 00:17)
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