Campaign Finance Reform: Systems Thinking to the Rescue

Feb 27, 2019 6:42pm PST by bmcphail, Community

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Escalating campaign spending and its many related issues are highly corrosive to our system of representative democracy but the political barriers to amending the constitution are nearly impossible to overcome. A legislative approach is much easier but is imperiled by constitutional questions, particularly the SCOTUS decisions classifying money as speech.

As a lay follower of SYSTEMS THINKING, I think the concepts of systems science can come to the rescue and do so in a way that studiously avoids constitutional issues. I believe that legislation can be crafted to turn the natural reaction of the political system from one of increasing money in politics to one of “just enough” money in politics, by means of what systems scientists call negative feedback.

The main barrier to my proposed solution is that people tend to misunderstand negative feedback and thus may raise objections to its often counter intuitive outcomes, so here is a brief explanation of the concept, taken from classroom demos I often use while introducing high schoolers to systems thinking.

Positive Feedback: Everyone who has ever placed two iPhones face-to-face has experienced positive feedback. There, an initial stimulus is picked up by both actors in the system, which then pass it back and forth, magnifying it in each cycle. The result is painful. This is our current system of campaign finance: an escalating arms race of spending.

Negative Feedback: The negative feedback loop is a time-honored way to keep systems on an even keel. Instead of reacting to an action by amplifying it, negative feedback works in opposition to it. I demonstrate this with a simple setup. I plug a lamp into a photoelectric switch that turns on lights at dark and shuts them off in the daytime, then darken the room. Immediately, the light turns on…..then back off again as the photo switch detects the lamplight...then on…..then off………

Light on → switch off → light off → switch on → light on → switch off . . . and so on.

This diary advances the thought that the negative feedback concept can be applied to campaign finance law in a way that 1. is well within the current lawmaking powers of Congress and 2. studiously avoids constitutional issues of money as speech. All it requires is political will and organization, but so does the amendment process times ten.

Details below. I am no legislative staffer and certainly not a lawyer, so forgive the plain language. Obviously this would need to be translated into ledgespeak:

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A law establishing a campaign finance equalization fund and other measures to ensure fairness in the legislative process

1. There will be no limit whatever on the amount individuals or corporate entities can spend to advocate their political goals, subject to existing laws governing nonprofits.

2. Every direct campaign contribution will be a matter of public record. Failure to report contributions and amounts will constitute a felony.

3. Indirect campaign contributions will be subject to challenge to determine their qualification under this law.

4. A campaign finance equalization fund will be established with an initial appropriation of $10 billion. A surcharge on capital income over $100,000 [or other plausible source of revenue unrelated to monetary speech] will be levied sufficient to replenish the fund on an annual basis.

5. Any political candidate who can present petitions constituting five percent of the electorate in a given jurisdiction will be entitled to a grant of funds from the campaign finance equalization fund equal to the largest campaign contribution on record for his/her specific jurisdiction and race.

6. In the case of the campaign finance equalization fund being exhausted, it will be supplemented from the general fund.

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Unrelated to the core proposal above, other reforms that would make good riders:

7. No public official elected or appointed shall accept a personal gift of any amount. Doing so will constitute a felony.

8. Elected officials are banned for life from subsequently accepting employment as a lobbyist or by a lobbying firm. Doing so will constitute a felony.
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At first glance, one might assume that these provisions would result in catastrophic runaway spending, but just as my photocell circuit creates alternating/opposite effects, the systemic effect of these provisions would be to minimize campaign contributions and create an environment in which the content of speech is again more important than it’s (monetary) volume. The net effect of the campaign equalization fund will be to make it unproductive to raise one’s contribution in order to drown out the opposition. More spending simply funds your opposition: You buy a bigger megaphone:Uncle Sam gives your opponents one to match it. The net effect will be that money in politics will be driven to the absolute minimum necessary for the system to function.

The one underlying assumption of this scheme is that politicians are humans, not machines. A machine would continue to add money until all the money in the world was consumed. A human politician will see that this framework of law sets up a zero sum game and rewards efficient use of resources, not maximum use of resources.

Please note that speech….neither personal nor monetary….is restricted in any way. Anyone can spend any amount. It just won’t gain them any real advantage except to enrich their opponents.

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