The Clinton campaign raised and spent much more money than the Trump campaign: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
The U.S. desperately needs campaign finance reform.
To the extent that this is true, campaign finance laws couldn't have stopped it. If anything, restricting the ability of Americans to express their opinions makes foreign propaganda even stronger.
Again, the investigation is still underway and the full extent of the assistance is still unknown, meaning you can't assert that until the findings are released.
“You can't assert that kids died in this school shooting until the investigation is over, since the extent was unknown.”
It similarly does not work if parents are preparing the funerals.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report back in January 2017 decisively stating this:
> We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.
> Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.
> […] We [CIA, FBI, NSA] have high confidence in these judgments.
> We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment.
This problem goes well beyond any single political candidate.
You need to think about these things in nuance rather than just looking at hard numbers.
People say Sanders got crushed by Clinton, ignoring the media blackout on his campaign for the first half of the primary and the fact that he started in the low single digits for name ID and ended with 45% of the votes.
Context matters.
Yes, that's part of my point. Suppose you overcome the many Constitutional and logistical problems and pass campaign finance laws that limit candidates to spending a fixed amount of money and prohibit third party spending. This would give an even bigger advantage to candidates who are already well known, political insiders, and those the media chooses to give attention to.
People say Sanders got crushed by Clinton, ignoring the media blackout on his campaign for the first half of the primary and the fact that he started in the low single digits for name ID and ended with 45% of the votes.
And the DNC blatantly putting their thumb on the scale. Sanders did as well as he did largely because ordinary people were able to contribute to his campaign and help get his message out.
Money is a proxy to power. Power can be expressed in different ways, such as influence as seen by both Clinton and Trump.
How does this refute that money from any source can influence elections? We need campaign finance reform now.
Currently the only leverage that someone from outside the government class has is money, and reform that takes all of that power from the citizenry and puts it in the hands of the government is downright scary.
My own opinion is that asking politicians who take "Big Money" to pass legislation to put a stop to that is unrealistic. It will never, ever, happen.
What is realistic is to personally pledge and publicly announce that you will stop voting for any politician who takes or uses Big Money and urge others to do the same.
When you get enough representatives elected who don't take that Big Money, and defeat enough who do, passing that legislation will be possible. But not before then.
This is happening right now. People are beginning to do this. We all need to do this.
So the government gets to decide which political parties can run candidates? That sounds a little too much like certain 'democratic' dictatorships. I don't think we want to (or can) put that much power in the hands of the government.
Stronger anti-nepotism laws, restraints on the ability to pardon, and ending the electoral college also all seem helpful and would have bipartisan support.
If ending the electoral college had any meaningful bipartisan support, it would already be dead as a system, as changing that is overwhelmingly supported by Democrats.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/2305/americans-long-questioned-e...
Recent and past presidential candidates who supported direct election of the President in the form of a constitutional amendment, before the National Popular Vote bill was introduced: George H.W. Bush (R-TX-1969), Bob Dole (R-KS-1969), Gerald Ford (R-MI-1969), Richard Nixon (R-CA-1969), Michael Dukakis (D-MA), Jimmy Carter (D-GA-1977), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY-2001).
Recent and past presidential candidates with a public record of support, before November 2016, for the National Popular Vote bill that would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes: Bob Barr (Libertarian- GA), U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Senator Fred Thompson (R–TN), Senator and Vice President Al Gore (D-TN), Ralph Nader, Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD), Jill Stein (Green), Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee (R-I-D, -RI), Governor and former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean (D–VT), Congressmen John Anderson (R, I –ILL).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_Weapons_Ban_of_2013
Each party would adjust their platform as a result, so there is fundamental advantage to either that I see. It would certainly save a lot of time spent campaigning in the middle battleground states, and result in a lot more pork barrel projects in cities.
It changes state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
So far only very blue states have passed it, which tells you something about what the red and competitive states think of it.
The campaign is cleverly structured in a way to avoid national debate on the matter, and delayed impact further reduces the discussion in each state.
I don’t see it going anywhere.
Support for a national popular vote for President has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
The National Popular Vote bill in 2017 passed the New Mexico Senate and Oregon House. It was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10). Since 2006, the bill has passed 35 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 261 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9) and New Mexico (5). The bill has been enacted by 11 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes.
It changes state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
You seem to be implying it's a foregone conclusion that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to do this, but that certainly hasn't been proven.
At best, this reveals a clearer link in the DNC emails being hacked from Russia. These were then sent to Wikileaks. If they came from Russia, then it was likely to influence our election, and it likely benefited Trump. But that (in no way) implies any behavior on the part of the Trump campaign. You're making a big leap here.
No one has been executed for treason against the federal government. Yet.
This is a pipe dream and I'm not sure this is even possible, but I think the best outcome of this is to pass legislation to try and ensure that:
1. Political campaigns don't engage in the type of behaviour in the first place, and
2. Make communications more public in general - official campaigns of people running for public office must operate under the light of greater public scrutiny
Democracy is only possible if accurate information is available, and the biggest takeaway for me in the last elections was just how many secrets all political players have.