Lobbies and elections

Given the ongoing lobbyist scandal/trials in the US, I’ll share some thoughts on that topic. Let’s start from somewhere basic.

I think it fairly obvious that in a modern democracy, there is a correspondence between money and political power. No one will vote for you if they don’t know about you, and getting the message and/or image out to the people tends to cost money. Money spent on planning campaigns and doing prior studies is also a big factor in the success of a given candidate or party.

In turn, this creates a shift of power towards people or companies with large amounts of money at hand. While the system is still “one person, one vote”, these players are the ones who can determine which politicians get public exposure, and how wide that exposure is.

I view this as a bad thing, since these entities will naturally shape politics in their own favor, and because of this the interests of the populace will not be as important in the decision making as they should be.

What can be done against this?

Regulating the campaigns might be a good idea, but in a free society, there are too many ways to dodge such a regulation. If companies cannot contribute to a campaign, then the people behind them will. If you limit the campaign funds, what is to stop people from campaigning for a candidate’s success independently? Because we live in countries that advocate free speech, people are perfectly within their rights to do so. This is not to say that some regulation is not needed. Financial transparency of the campaign funds would be a good thing, although that too can be circumnavigated.

The Clean Elections movement is nice idea. Becoming a “clean candidate” is not required, and because of this, they can be stricter. After a given amount of people contribute small amounts of money to a candidate who applied for a clean election, the candidate vows not to take any private contributions, in return for a sum of money from the government for campaign purposes. Because participating is voluntary, some shady things that would pass as legal in normal circumstances could be considered unethical (of course, it might still be dodged, but with more work). Participating in this system could become something akin to a brand or a seal of trust, showing the public that these candidates don’t have (as many) hidden strings attached.

Next to regulating the politicians, one could also work on the public. I feel that political awareness is very low. Most people access information from the few mainstream media outlets they have ready access to, and don’t evaluate the information obtained in a critical manner. In my country, the number one daily in terms of sales has been a tabloid (news) paper for the last few years, and god only knows how the readers of such a thing view the world.

Spreading political awareness is very important, since if people are more aware of the effect their votes have on the flow of events, they can use their votes in a more responsible manner. Perhaps we should promote critical thinking and political awareness in some kind of grassroots movement?

link about the lobbyist scandal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff

more about clean elections : http://www.fairelections.us/article.php?id=13