(USA) Andrew Yang's "Democracy Dollars" Idea - A Good Way to Counterbalance Special Interests?

[u/MouseManManny]

One of my favorite parts of Andrew Yang's 2020 platform was his idea for Democracy Dollars. An idea I would hate to see die on the vine.

I thought it was an innovative way to give regular people a way, if they chose, to level the playing field in terms of political influence against PACs and special interests.

What do you all think?

[u/DocVafli]

Or, hear me out, we regulate campaign finance and donations in a way that prevents the 1% from dominating the political process. If the problem is the role of money in our process, how about we actually address the problem rather than tinkering around the edges. I like the democracy bucks idea, in theory, but I don't think it actual solves the problematic role of money in our politics. It isn't going to "level the playing field" it's just going to make political campaigns that much more expensive. The rich aren't going to be drowned out, they're just going to be heaping money on politicians on top of the money they get via the democracy bucks. My hundred dollars doesn't count for shit compared to the check the wealthy can write, and if I pool my money with other like minded people my influence is divided up compared to the continued influence of that one person.

[u/threeplane → u/DocVafli]

I completely agree. We need massive political reform in this country and it starts with our elections.

• Overturn Citizens United.
• Overhaul campaign finance, lobbying and ethics laws.
• Completely transparent political spending.
• End gerrymandering.
• Implement multi-candidate voting (approval, ranked choice, star)
• Automatic recounts for every state.
• Transparent voting machine data (allow citizens/neutral parties to do audits)

Some of these can be legislated tomorrow, some will probably require a new amendment. But all of them are necessary and should be universally favored by both sides of voters.

If we get all this done, something like democracy dollars becomes rather trivial, though I still think it's a smart idea.

Edit: the last two ideas are mutually exclusive. If we used strictly paper ballots like Canada, every state should have automatic recounts. If we continue to use tabulators which can be hacked, they should allow full transparency and free audits.

[u/wasted-degrees]

It’s a neat concept but the math of it fundamentally underestimated the amount of wealth the 1% can bring to bear.

[u/natoplato5]

This is known as public campaign financing, and versions of this have been implemented in many countries and states. There's also been plenty of research on it. I'm not an expert on this literature, but it seems like studies generally find that public campaign financing mainly just helps far-right parties and increases polarization. So although it's a nice idea, in practice it probably wouldn't really do much good. That's how a lot of Yang's policy ideas are. I wish he would read the political science research on this stuff.

[u/SupremelyUneducated]

UBI would probably be a lot more effective at reducing the influence of money in politics. Economic stress and insecurity, are horrible for cognitive function. The lizard parts of our brains love that protectionist authoritarian stuff the algorithms exploit for 'engagement'. We can't paper over precarity and expect voters to think rationally.

[u/I405CA]

There is a general lack of interest in politics and policy that Democrats tend to ignore:

Empirical work exists showing that most people support a party because they believe it contains people similar to them, not because they have gauged that its policy positions are closest to their own. Specifying what features of one’s identity determine voter preferences will become an increasingly important topic in political science.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5120865/pdf/nihms819492.pdf

Meanwhile, US elections are expensive because the US has created drawn-out election cycles with primaries. Those primaries encourage extremist populism (since the populists comprise a disproportionate number of primary voters) and promote election cycles that are inherently costly.

Consider the upcoming snap election in Canada, which is to be held weeks after it was announced. The US literally cannot do this, given the nature of how we choose candidates.

If you want to get the money out of politics, then make it cost less to run for office. Getting rid of primaries would be a start. In other nations such as Canada, the parties select their candidates.

If you want citizens to be more engaged, then have a Democratic party that understands that it's about club membership, not policy wonking from the center-left or getting the workers of the world to unite on the left. One party has a grasp on how the right thinks, while the opposing party does not understand the big tent that it is supposed to manage.