Voting with dollars is campaign finance reform proposed by Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres, both professors at Yale University. The premise of this idea is that every voter is given $50, which they get to distribute to the candidate of their choice anonymously at an ATM machine. If the candidates do not know who is voting for them they will have to try and please the most amount of constituents possible because everyone has the same $50 to give to candidates. This $50 is distributed with $10 to contribute to a race for House of Representatives, $15 to those running for Senate, and $25 for Presidential elections [1]. One drawback to this method of voting would be the amount this would cost the government, if the same 117 million people who voted in the 2012 election each allocated $50 then that would amount to $5.85 billion [2]. The next part of the plan is to raise the contribution limits, capping total contributions for a year to $100,000 [1]. However, these donations would be all done anonymously through the FEC so there would be no pressure for private contributors to give money to a candidate that a person does not really want to support [1]. Personally, I think this in theory is a great idea. The money flowing into campaigns will better reflect the entire population, and I think the $50 voting dollars that every citizen is entitled to would give more incentive to actually vote. The reason why this is so unfeasible though, is the cost to the taxpayers. Especially with all of the recent budget issues I do not think that increasing government spending at this point would be a viable option. If this idea interests you please watch the video below. Bruce Ackerman, the creator of this idea, explains his idea in full.
Sources:
[1] Manjoo, Farhad. “How to Fix Campaign Financing Forever for $50.” Salon.com. Salon, 5 Feb. 2007. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.salon.com/2007/02/05/campaign_finance_10/>.
[2] Lederman, Josh. “Early Figures Show Fewer Americans Cast Votes in 2012 Race than in 2008.” Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 07 Nov. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://news.yahoo.com/early-figures-show-fewer-americans-cast-votes-2012-111322726.html>.
Campaign Finance Reform 