I had to go to countless forums, symposiums, panel discussions and rallies, both for and against Arizona’s Clean Elections law, to get a grip on the major mis/perceptions, good intentions, justifications and motivations of those involved, but I think I finally have.

At an event at the (Barry) Goldwater Institute, I got the final piece of the puzzle from the head honcho of the bureaucracy created to implement and oversee this new function of government.  I needed to know the justification for continuing on with a program that did not show us the immediate and substantial improvements in candidate choices we were told we would see by its original promoters. 

The Goldwater Institute’s published reports, along with virtually every other serious study to date, on the effects the ‘Clean Elections’ law has had, shows that any effects have been unnoticeable or insignificant, at best.  For it to be of any use what-so-ever, it needed to be a tidal wave of good clean wholesome campaigns of ideas between an expanded choice of political perspectives from the word, “go”.  It wasn’t.  A slow start would only prove we didn’t need it in the first place.  The non-start we got just put an exclamation point on it.

Remember, if it hasn’t had any effect, it puts us back exactly where we were when ‘we absolutely had to do something’ in terms of trying to fix a slimy, money-dealing, incumbent-protecting political landscape that’s been almost completely turned over to an exclusive two-party (really, one-party) system.  That’s why there really is no difference between Democrats and Republicans—they’re partners, separated only by percentages and degrees as to ‘how much’ they will demand from you, and as to ‘how far’ they will go in negating your rights.

What does all this add up to?  You guessed it, now all’s we’ve got is a bureaucratic agency that is functionally useless—but that still won’t go away.  That’s right, we’re paying for the lease of office space, the light bill, the phone bill, travel expenses, salaries, bonus’, healthcare, pensions and petty cash for an agency that actually gets in the way of accomplishing its own mission statement.

Why would it do that?  Well….you’ll just have to figure that out for yourself.

I was ‘moved’ to do something that is totally outside my own political and philosophical limits--design a workable, realistic and transparent “Clean Elections” program.  I suppose it would make sense that a dis-interested perspective would be the clearest.  My own personal experiences in campaigning also allow for an insight you can only get from actually being there.  So here goes a self-described Libertarian outlining a constitutionally repugnant program.

In a ‘free’ country, elections are purposely and permanently separated from government oversight or control.  Interesting, that.

Unfortunately, if “The People” (against better judgment) say we absolutely have to have another wasteful government sub-division, it should at least be efficiently wasteful.

It might be smart to clearly define the problems that absolutely need to be corrected first. 

The People were led to believe the mission statement of the Clean Elections Commission went something like this:  “The purpose of this new government commission is to effect an immediate and drastic change in Arizona’s campaign rules to thwart the rampant corruption amongst incumbents seeking to win re-election by eliminating, excluding or personally attacking any competition.  The goals of this program are to level the playing field for more competition in the political marketplace of ideas and to eliminate special interest group influences altogether.  We will make it possible for individual candidates, from any political party, with good ideas but only a minimal following to effectively reach a statewide audience with their particular views.  We will discourage unwarranted personal attacks between candidates and protect the Freedoms we dearly love and cherish.”

Oddly enough, that’s what the vast majority of people “think” is the mission statement and intent of the Clean Election Commission and its “non-partisan” Institute.  Make no mistake, this is NOT the Clean Elections mission statement—this is mine.  So let’s go ahead and use this as our mission statement for an efficiently wasteful attempt to regulate campaigns.

It might be a good idea to know ‘who’ exactly is going to be singled out to fund this venture, and exactly how much is the budget?   We know we can’t actually ‘give’ politicians money—that’d be as silly as giving money to a drunken gambler expecting them to clean up and get a new life with it.  If we did we’d have to deal with the ‘possibility’ that some candidates actually might cheat to get at the free cash taken from somebody else. 

For our plan, giving money to any candidate is out of the question.   In an ideal plan our little program would actually be self-funding.  After all, our goal is to give more candidates the exposure to put their sales pitch in front of the statewide public for consideration while eliminating or minimizing the influence of big money and special interests.  Isn’t it?  That means we also have to remove the big money and special interests in government itself.

In keeping with our mission statement, what say we encourage a variety of different political perspectives from which the voting public might choose by really leveling the playing field?  How can we best do this?  Hummm, we want to insure that even the “little guy/gal” can be heard—once they’ve crossed a threshold—exactly evenly with all of the other contenders.  Can this be done?

What if we said the threshold was 3,000, or even 4,000 registered voters giving $10.00 to the candidate’s efforts, (keep in mind that it is now 4,200 $5.00 contributions to qualify now for the Governor’s race) and every penny of it went directly to the Fair Elections Commission to fund its operations?  Oh, didn’t I tell you we really needed to change the name so that our new commission won’t be stigmatized?

Once the candidate has qualified, whatever threshold has been set, they are now qualified for a full 60-minutes of tape that will be broadcast from an Internet site maintained by the commission on a 24/7 basis.  In addition, our hard-working candidates will receive the same exposure on the local PBS station, or even one that is set up just for elections, in 15 or 30-minute segments at appointed and advertised times chosen randomly by the Fair Elections Commission.

The aggregate of the $10.00 contributions would have to be used to pay for or offset the costs of the website, the airtime and the production.

What would really put cherries on the pie would be to have a full sheet insert printed up with pictures, a message and contact information for all of the candidates that would be placed in every newspaper in Arizona.

We could also do a rotation of candidates on special billboards set up just for the election cycle and the piece de resistance would be the same idea of setting up a temporary radio station to provide a forum where the candidates could be heard statewide as well.  And that’s all there is to it.

Well, maybe one restriction for groups holding candidate forums—maybe we should require that they post a sign conspicuously at the entrance clearly stating whether they excluded any candidate(s) and why, so that the audience would know they were experiencing a censored or limited field.

Candidates should still be able to seek contributions and add additional literature—but why would they?  And because no special interest could really add any advantage for a candidate they’d have no reason to cheat, as they do now, in order to give ‘their’ candidate some sort of advantage or gain leverage over them.

Yes, the pollsters, like Zogby and Rasmussen will still try to limit people’s choices and perceptions by not including candidates they think are a threat to the Democrat/Republican Party, as will the newspapers, like the Arizona Republic, The East Valley Tribune and the Tucson Citizen, but their relevance seems to be on the wane anyway.  People have caught on to their game.

Life may not be ‘fair’ but the election of representatives in our government should be, and all for less than two or three Gubernatorial candidates are taking now.

And lest they think they’ll have to go look for a real job, we could hire the same folks who currently work at the Clean Elections to staff the Fair Elections Commission.   This might ensure this service to the People and to the candidates is carried out flawlessly.  We wouldn’t tempt them to supplant the will of the People with their own clearly political agenda (that has included removing specific elected officials from office), while turning a blind eye toward infractions by candidates/incumbents who do their cheerleading.

Except that it be for a criminal act or fraud, no un-elected body, no board full of members, no Supreme Court Justice nor a gaggle of them has any authority to un-do the ‘will’ of the People.

Such a plan delivers all that any candidate could hope for and relieves them of cumbersome filings and foolish regulations and still delivers the full panoply of choices directly to the People.

There’s a reason nobody calls what we have now “Fair Elections”, maybe we, you and I, should do something about that.

Until that time, as Citizens, we should pay attention to which candidates are on the government dole, and who are therefore directly influenced by big money from government bureaucrats who arbitrarily decide who y-o-u can put into office.