Saturday, September 14, 2013

Costs too high to be a political candidate (#1688)

Ever thought about being a political representative? That urge within us to lead our country, either a small part of it or all of it? The cost just to become a candidate pretty much leaves more than half our population unable to participate. What is up with that? Unless you have expendable money and/or wealthy friends willing to influence you for their money, you have little chance of even officially registering to be a candidate for most any office. The best of our natures notwithstanding, most are simply not in enough wealth to even consider political public service. Now if you are wealthy you surely can participate since the barrier to afford a political run is not there. That is simply wrong since those of us who are not wealthy have a point of view about society but we are not able to present it in a way that is responsible to individual voters. How is it that our elections can only have those who are willing puppets of big money interests or willing wealthy folks? We need to reform how our elections process operates. I have always been a big advocate for public financing of elections since it would take away the cost barrier to even applying to become a candidate and replace it with a threshold of voter signatures as the threshold of who can run. To get voter signatures it follows that we would have to have policies that voters want or hope to install. That is how democracy works, not like today where only those of a wealthy perspective or willingness to advance the wealthy agenda can get a foot into our political races.

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