It’s A Gray Area:

Our democracy, as bequeathed and entrusted to us by our Founding Fathers, is in peril on several fronts.

Today, it simply costs too much to establish a credible electoral campaign. Even for judicial campaigns, it takes more than $20,000 for a candidate to publish a 200-word statement in the voters’ ballot statement. That is silly! And harmful! How do we expect voters to gather the information they need in judicial or other elections if these statements cost so much money? In my view, we would all benefit if the statements would be furnished for free to the candidates.

The next best way to get a candidate’s name in front of the voters is to have it included in one of the many “slate mailers.” Although most people do not know this, the “endorsements” on almost all mailers are simply available to the first candidate who pays the required fee.

Mostly there are no such organizations as are shown as sponsors of the slate mailers. In fact, you or I could make up a name such as the “Firefighters for Justice,” or “Parents for the American Way,” and then offer our mailers for hire to the first candidates who come up with the money. Seldom do these mailers pertain to a political philosophy; instead, they are money-making tools, pure and simple.

Another major threat to our democracy is the process of gerrymandering, which has been addressed in a prior column. Both parties in Congress have manipulated the voting districts expressly to keep their seats from the other party’s competition. As a result, there is more competition for seats in the Russian Politburo than we have today in our Congress.

The biggest threat to our democracy was highlighted by Alexis de Tocqueville when he was traveling through our country in the early 1800s. He said “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” In my view, we are getting perilously close to that situation.

Programs voted into existence today by our “representatives” both in Sacramento and in Washington D.C. simply buy their votes by giving our taxpayer money away. That is fine in a vacuum, since most of us want the poor and downtrodden to be better off. But we must understand that this activity is not free — someone must pay the freight.