In an economic sense, this may not do what you think it will. Those who donate directly to a campaign, yes, they will likely be doing it out of genuine support for candidates. But I think what you would see happen is that corporations would no longer donate directly to campaigns (as there would be no benefit to them in the capitalist economy); in fact, it will begin to appear as though candidates only receive small direct donations, because those are the donors who genuinely support candidates. Instead, the corporations et al., will take that same money and make direct campaign ads close to election time in prime advertising and marketing slots (since the Supreme Court said they can now), or they will donate to 527s who'll do their dirty work for them. 527s have become excellent at "coordinating without coordinating" with their favourite candidates. So now there may be even LESS transparency than before, and these groups will only get more clever about serving their own interests as time goes along.

Sorry for being critical but not constructive up to this point. My suggestion, and I know it also has problems, would be that there be a form of progressive tax on funds used towards the campaign, or maybe even a permitting system for fundraising in a presidential campaign. Permitting is a little too complicated to explain concisely, so I'll just explain the tax. The tax might work like, "For every dollar a candidate in a primary uses in their own campaigns, s/he must also use x percent (maybe 100 percent) of a dollar towards each of the other primary candidate's campaigns." One problem with this is that there will then be more hurdles put in place to keep candidates from joining primaries (especially in smaller parties with limited funds like Greens, Libertarians, Constitution-ers). It also doesn't help the U.S. become a multi-party system anytime soon; a Green candidate with good ideas/ relatively strong fundraising will join the Democratic primary and get subsidized, as opposed to joing the Greens and being taxed. A bright side is that it should even out the big primaries; imagine if Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel had a campaign budget that was up in the Edwards/Clinton range?

On second thought, don't imagine that.

-Christan

or... say, I'm a special interest group & TELL someone how much I'm donating...

I imagine that looking @ the deposit & the date might tip off those zany corporatized hacks... right?

just say'n... maybe the emphasis should be on limiting donations entirely & removing the 'let's pool our resources into one fund' move.

Spread Love...
... but wear the Glove!

BlueBerry Pick'n
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ThisCanadian
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"

That's ridiculous. If candidate x subtly makes it known that he/she supports drilling for oil in the national parks, the oil lobby can still get him/her the money to crush the opposition while maintaining complete anonymity. There's your "genuine support for the candidate."

Public financing is the only way to make elections fair.

Even better, require anyone making a donation to be eligible to vote for that candidate,and then limit the amount to $2000. With forfeiture of illegally donated funds and mandatory prison time, not at a tennis camp, but a real prison for those who violate this.
This would force the candidates to deal with issues, rather than hiring spin doctor's and fabricating lies about their opponents.
Unions, corporations and associations have no business donating to any campaign.
No more PAC's, 529's, no lobbyist holding fund raiser's or showing up with a sack of cash.
Just politician's representing the people of their district.
Wasn't that how it was supposed to work in the beginning?

I agree that public financing is the only way but that isn't likely to happen until we solve the problem of redistricting.

So long as State Legislators are in charge of redistricting they will protect their seats. The percentage of vulnerable seats in the '06 Congressional election was frighteningly small because of this.

Complicated funding schemes such as permitting systems or progressive taxes are costly to operate and vulnerable to fraud. Public financing is the simplest, most cost effective method to ensure that we have fair elections - that don't bankrupt us.

We must DEMAND that our State Legislators turn redistricting over to a non-partisan group and that our U.S. Congressional representatives do the hard work and give us "fair elections" - the title given to public financing in Arizona.

What about diluting the impact of those inane uninformative 30 second spots that appeal to the baser instincts of voters in the most negative manner? That would entail some coercion to establish a separate network where all candidates on the ballot could effectively get their stances on a wide spectrum of issues to the public. And interested voters could actually get details about what the candidate would do if elected.
Of course, this would be patently unfair to all major party candidates since they actually don't want anyone to know any of the details of their nonexistent stances. For major party candidates actually don't stand for anything other than being cute, poised, and experienced and able to respond in a statesmanlike manner. I would love access to such a marketplace of policy preferences among people who want my vote. But then again, I - like most voters - actually care about issues. The mainstream media obsesses about image, amounts of money raised, and the horse race aspect of the campaign. They obviously want us to know the least we can about actual issues that affect our lives and how these political whores will deal or - in the case of major party candidates - not deal with these problems.

Blind trusts and publicly-financed campaigns are good first steps, but we must remember where many political candidates come from: corporate America. In the case of blind trusts, even if political candidates were prohibited from knowing the source of their funding, it wouldn't eliminate their bias towards special interests and big business. Many politicians have previous ties to big business (e.g. Bush Jr.) and will likely go to work in some capacity for the same, or similar business in the industry when out of office. Thus, although further regulation of campaign financing is important, so is ensuring transparency of a candidate's past, and conveying the importance of this to the general public.

I think we have to look at free speech in the sense of getting your message out without raising huge sums for media time. I would argue for requiring radio and TV stations who are licensed to use our public airwaves to allocate a portion of their scheduling to free political speech. And we need to promote free internet sites. As long as it costs big bucks to buy air time, candidates will find a way to get that money.
I. Aronow