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Jan. 30, 2026 14:59-15:37 - CSPAN
37:49
Washington Journal Jeff Clements
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mimi geerges
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ted fraley
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Super PACs and Dark Money 00:09:19
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mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
Joining us is Jeff Clements.
He is co-founder and CEO of American Promise, here to talk about campaign finance laws and money in politics.
Welcome to the program.
unidentified
Thanks, Mami.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
So tell us about American Promise, what your mission is, and how you get your funding.
unidentified
Yeah, we launched American Promise in 2016 with a single mission, and that's to serve Americans across the political spectrum.
We don't care who you vote for.
We're uniting Americans who know we have to fix the money in politics problem in America.
And the only way to do that, because the Supreme Court has held that unlimited spending of money is just free speech.
And we now have $20 billion elections, foreign money coming in, dark money super PAC.
So Americans want to fix the Constitutional Amendment and correct the Supreme Court's mistake.
And it's got support across the spectrum.
So American Promise is actually getting it done.
And our job is not to amend the Constitution at American Promise.
It's to help Americans do it.
And it's happening.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
When you say fix the problem of money in politics, spell that out for us.
What is the problem?
unidentified
Sure.
And I do want to answer your question about where our funding comes from, because I know one thing that is we're concerned about, like all Americans, is dark, undisclosed money.
And I want to say we disclose all our donors.
It comes from Americans across the country.
There's nobody who anyone would have heard of, probably, in terms of big donors.
So that's where our funding comes from.
And we're a nonprofit.
So the problem with money in politics has been growing these past 50 years.
In 1976, the Supreme Court, for the first time in 200 years of American history, decided when it struck down parts of the Federal Election Campaigns Act that spending money in elections is a free speech right.
It was a new theory.
They kind of made it up.
And the court ever since has been expanding on that.
So the result is that there's now money that comes in to fund campaigns, to fund the super PACs that are kind of outside the campaigns, all the negative ads, all the stuff that Americans see every day in our political system, and the systemic corruption that results.
And so that's the problem is we don't, we've had more difficulty with representative functional government because we have these endless elections driven by this out-of-control money.
Now, as I said, a $16 billion election in 2020, it's going to be worse in 2024.
I'm sorry, in 2026, and $16 billion election in 2024.
So the solution is that Americans can decide what do we want to do with money in politics.
Usually we've had anti-corruption laws that limited it.
We had, going back to Teddy Roosevelt rules about corporate money in politics, all the states had decided their own rules for state elections.
The Supreme Court has undone all of that.
A constitutional solution can give that decision back to Americans to say, what do we want to do to fix the money in politics problem?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
So, the real issue here is that a candidate can be bribed.
In effect, I'll give you this much money if you do this for me.
unidentified
Yeah, in effect, and it's not necessarily even about the specific candidate or specific bribery scandal.
The whole system's a scandal because we have a systemic, in effect, bribery problem exactly, where money buys results.
And if you don't have money, you don't get results in this system anymore.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Well, today is the 50th anniversary of that Supreme Court decision that you mentioned.
It was 1976.
Buckley v. Vallejo will put the information up on the screen.
If you could kind of explain some of these things, you already talked about how spending money is considered free speech and it's protected by the Constitution.
Other things is that it upheld the limits on individual contributions to candidates but struck down limits on independent expenditures, candidate personal expenditures, and total campaign spending.
Explain that.
unidentified
Yeah, so the idea that money is free speech is not in the Constitution.
The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law infringing on the freedom of speech.
And, you know, for 200 years of American history, no court had ever decided that the First Amendment limited the ability of Americans to have rules about how money in politics should be spent.
But after the resignation of President Nixon and the scandals of the early 1970s, the Congress passed a law called the Federal Election Campaigns Act.
And it went up to the Supreme Court.
And as you said, Mimi, the court, in a lengthy, multi-hundred-page decision, upheld parts of the law, including limits on direct contributions to campaigns, and struck down other parts of the law, including the rules about so-called independent spending, which can be used to go around the limits on campaigns, of course.
And so that became, in the court's view, the rule under the First Amendment.
No American ever decided that.
Congress didn't decide that.
It was the court trying to deal with the intersection of money and free speech in campaigns.
And so that is why, even today, there's a $3,500 limit to give it directly to a campaign.
But Americans might well ask: well, how can billionaires just spend $200 million in an election or $300 million in an election?
What's going on with that?
Well, the reason they can do that, these dark money super PACs, is because of that Buckley distinction between directly to the campaign versus independent spending.
So you can set up an independent spending.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
And is it actually independent?
Is that enforceable?
unidentified
Well, as we have seen, it's almost impossible to enforce because, you know, there are, it's true, there are independent PACs and there are still limits on PACs of $5,000, but if it's independent, the court says we're not allowed to limit that.
And so they create, you know, sort of mechanisms to say they're independent and they usually have separate staff between the super PAC and the campaigns.
They have, you know, different mailing addresses.
They have things that try to show that they're not coordinating.
But any of us who've watched these elections over these past cycles and the money pouring in knows that both parties are using super PACs.
Both parties are raising hundreds and hundreds, billions of dollars, literally billions of dollars, for use in the campaigns that are going into what ostensibly are independent super PACs.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
If you've got a question for our guest, Jeff Clements, about money in politics and campaign financing, you can start giving us a call now.
The lines are biparty.
So Democrats are on 202, 748, 8,000.
Republicans are on 202, 748, 8001.
And Independents, 202, 748, 8002.
And we'll get to your calls shortly.
Well, another Supreme Court ruling was the 2010 Citizens United ruling.
Can you explain what that did and how that changed things?
unidentified
Sure.
In the early 2000s, some of us will remember Senator John McCain and Senator Feingold from Wisconsin got together and managed to unite members of Congress behind what was called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known as McCain-Feingold at the time.
But the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was trying to close the loopholes, some of which we talked about, about how money was flowing around the limits and into elections.
And it went up to the Supreme Court initially in a case called McConnell versus Federal Election Commission.
Sandra Day O'Connor was still on the court.
She'd served in state legislative bodies in Arizona.
She knew what politics was like.
The Supreme Court actually upheld the law in that case.
Just a few years later, when Sandra Day O'Connor retired, a new court, the Citizens United Court under Chief Justice John Roberts looked at the same questions and decided that, you know, going back to Buckley has got to be the rule.
Limits on Political Income? 00:02:22
unidentified
That case in 1976, where if it's independent, we're not allowed to limit it, therefore, and they simply decreed that independent expenditures are not corruption and that access and ingratiation are not corruption.
Therefore, we're not allowed to have limits around it.
So they reversed some of those earlier decisions.
They struck down parts of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
And that's why the Citizens United case is now, you hear a lot about it, because that's what really took the Buckley rule from the 70s and put it on steroids, if you will, in our time to lead to the multi-billion dollar kind of spending that we're seeing now.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Let's talk to callers.
We'll start with Walter, a Republican in Butler, Indiana.
Go ahead, Walter.
unidentified
Good morning, Mimi.
Hey, Jeff.
My coffee is hot and the snow's coming down.
I'm good to go.
Jeff, you're up against the Leviathan.
The cow has already left the building.
You're never going to stop finance reform where they're going to spend trillions of dollars to get it.
But that's something you can't change because if I want to donate a billion dollars, I have the right to.
But here's my thing.
If you're on food stamps or welfare or Social Security, there's income limits.
And the government says, okay, you know, a family of four, you can only earn $80,000 and there's a limit of income and that's all you can make.
Here's a real wild idea.
Is there any way that they could pass a law where any of these politicians that go on to Pennsylvania Avenue, you know, and when they get there, there's a limit income on how much they can earn per year?
That's it.
Because you're never going to stop the wise guys from funneling money and you're never going to slay greed.
But if you can make it to the politician, all right, whoever it is, I mean, you got Ilya Oman, $40 million.
You got Bernie Sanders, $20 million.
We know there's all payoffs, but how about income?
Is there any way you could actually do an income?
If I'm a politician for four years, my income is $125,000 a year, and that's it.
I can't invest in stocks.
I can't invest in any other stuff.
That's it.
That's your income.
like a school teacher or anybody else, that's your salary.
And other than that...
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
And, Walter, you would put that on the executive branch as well or just the legislative branch?
unidentified
All of them, because my definition of politics in poly in Latin means many and ticks are blood-sucking creatures.
They're all the left, the right.
Yeah, 100%.
That's why they go to office.
They go to office for control and power.
Politicians for Power 00:16:02
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
All right.
What do you think, Jeff?
unidentified
Walter, hey, thank you.
There's a lot of good ideas out there.
That's certainly an idea that we've heard a lot about.
People are frustrated with how the kind of corruption that seems to enrich the politicians.
I do want to, though, just encourage you, Walter, that Americans actually can do something about the money in politics problem.
And I think we have to, because that is how we'll get ideas actually into policy.
Because if we don't have the ability, because the court says we're not allowed to have decisions about anti-corruption law at the state and federal level that are driven by the people, we're not going to be able to get any good ideas into place.
And that's why we have the problem we have.
So, you know, it's not going to be because I do it.
It's going to be because Americans do it.
And Walter, 23 states have now formally backed a constitutional amendment to enable us to actually get some of these anti-corruption laws in place.
And that's moving now.
It's real.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Remind us what needs to happen for a constitutional amendment to take effect.
unidentified
Yeah, so to get an amendment, it's a big lift.
We need a two-thirds vote in Congress.
We need ratification in three-quarters of the states, in the state legislatures.
That's how you get an amendment.
But here's the thing.
America has gone through a lot of challenges before.
And when we're down at the toughest times in our history, we turn to the constitutional amendment power.
And I think the reason is because it's not driven by politicians.
It's driven by the people.
So if you look at like, you know, after the Civil War, of course, we did three amendments.
But we did four constitutional amendments between 1910 and 1920.
Those were tough times.
We did four constitutional amendments between 1961 and 1971.
Again, a tough period of American democracy.
And we're in another tough one now.
And I am encouraged to see Americans are doing it again.
We're relearning, as we do, about every 50 years that the Constitution that opens with We the People actually means that.
And Article 5 gives us the power to amend the Constitution.
So we're using it.
And the 23 states are moving forward.
More states are coming on board.
And we need all Americans in this effort.
It is a Leviathan, and we've got to unite to take it on.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Patrick, Naples, Florida, Line for Democrats.
You're on the air, Patrick.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Thank you.
Good morning.
As long as Trump has the power of pardon, it doesn't matter.
He's already pardoned several people that committed campaign finance fraud, were convicted and sentenced.
He's washed away billions in restitution to people who were harmed.
I don't see how you can change anything as long as this man is in power.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
What do you think?
unidentified
Well, Patrick, again, I think we're sort of taking a different approach about where the change comes from.
And by turning back to the states, back to the people, we find a lot of unity and a lot of determination.
We can't go on with this current system.
And the change has to come from the people with constitutional reform.
And so, again, I'd encourage you to take a look at American Promise.
The website has the progress.
It has how we can do this.
And ultimately, I think we obviously have to deal with issues of the day, but we also have to think about what we're building for the future.
And it is on us as citizens.
I know it can be a frustrating time.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
And what can citizens do if they're on board with what you want to do?
What should they do next?
unidentified
Again, I'd go to AmericanPromise.net, check it out, and we have a citizen pledge.
You sign up right there.
And we have thousands of volunteers.
And you can do it right where you live in your states.
The states are moving this forward.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
What happens when you sign the program?
unidentified
So then you get involved in contacting your local legislators if that's what you want to do.
If you want to do letters to the editor or communication around why you're frustrated and why you want this change and how we can do it, you can do that.
If you want to go to a citizen lobby day, which we do, we bring the people to the elected officials.
That's how it's working.
We have rotary programs.
Rotary clubs are all over America.
People are going to their local rotaries and doing presentations on this.
We train you to help you do that if that's what you want to do.
Basically, we listen first.
How do you want to help?
And then we help you amend the U.S. Constitution to get this fix done.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
George is on the line from New Jersey, Republican.
Good morning, George.
unidentified
Good morning.
Mr. Clemens, thanks for what you're doing.
I would like to propose that you have to be a registered voter in order to donate.
And I think there should be a limit of like $100.
So this way somebody like Elon Musk can't come in and give millions and cancel out everybody else's vote.
I mean, it might sound stupid, but if you're only allowed to give $100, you can't go to a senator and say, hey, I'll give you a million dollars when you get in there.
I need this.
And that would solve a lot of problems with the pharmaceutical companies, insurance, everything.
I mean, it's ridiculous that Citizen United.
You could give $100 from the presidency all the way down to the dog catcher.
If you wanted to donate 30 times, that's fine.
But each candidate, you could only give them $100, and that's it.
And I am definitely going to look up your association that you have.
You have a really good idea, and this has to get changed because it's getting worse and worse every year.
And thank you.
George, I say thank you.
It doesn't sound stupid at all.
It sounds like exactly the kind of patriotic response that we are seeing all over the country.
And some of our supporters call that the voter donor rule.
If you live here and vote in the election, you can donate.
But listen, at American Promise, we are not about one single idea or one policy or one fix.
There are a lot of good ideas like George's and others.
And the beauty of the constitutional amendment work is that gives it back to the people and it's who decides.
Well, we can decide then which kind of reforms we want.
So thank you for your support and encouragement, George.
And we'll see you on the website and out in the volunteer works for exactly the reasons you're saying.
You know, we can't just have the billionaire kind of democracy that this is turning into because it's not actually democracy.
We can get it back with this constitutional reform that's supported across the political spectrum.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
So short of a constitutional amendment, which as you said is a very heavy lift, is there something that Congress can do or are they blocked by these Supreme Court decisions?
unidentified
Well, the Supreme Court will block the most effective necessary rules, both at the state and federal level.
Let me just give you a couple of examples.
So the reason I say there's good ideas, it's not like Americans don't know what we should do.
It's that they keep getting struck down.
So the people of Maine, for example, and some other states have done this, passed a law that prohibited foreign governments from using their holdings in corporations, global corporations, to influence state elections by spending money.
The federal courts have struck that down under Buckley, under Citizens Union.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
And that is considered free speech.
unidentified
It's considered free speech.
So now it's a foreign government.
Exactly, exactly.
There's other examples of the states in Alaska, Alaska and other states tried to do what George is suggesting, which is, hey, there's so much outside influence trying to get into our state because we have a lot of resources.
They're trying to influence it and undermine the people here.
We have different rules if you live here versus if you're running money in from outside, struck down by the federal courts.
So that is the barrier.
And when we remove that barrier, these ideas can then start to take shape.
And they won't all be perfect, but then the power to correct them is also with the people.
So that's what we'll need to do.
Otherwise, we're just going to keep banging our head against the wall, and the courts are going to keep striking down the laws that we need.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
On the independent line in Paw Paw, Michigan, Bob, you're on the air.
unidentified
Well, this all comes down to the probably, other than maybe the Fugitive Slave Act, the worst law that's ever been passed, and that is Citizens United.
I remember when Mitt Romney was asked about that, and his answer was, corporations are people.
And until that law is removed off the books, nothing's going to change.
It is the worst law that's been passed, in my opinion, in the 20th century.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
And Jeff, you have a book that you wrote in 2014 with the title, Corporations Are Not People.
unidentified
Well, that's right, Mimi.
And I did a brief in the Citizens United case.
It kind of led me into this work.
And I think that's absolutely correct.
It needs to go.
And the way it goes is with the For Our Freedom Amendment, this constitutional amendment we're talking about.
But I think it's interesting, and we should just note, in a very divided time in this country, we've just had the Republican caller, the Independent caller, and the Democratic caller basically all saying that they like this idea.
And that's what we see around the country every day.
And so I know it can be discouraging how we're going to get an amendment.
This is how we do it.
We actually have deep agreement on this issue in America.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
And that deep agreement is rare these days.
I'll just show the results of a poll that your organization did with Ipsos.
And it said, so the wording of the question is, Congress and the states should be able to reasonably regulate and limit money in campaigns and elections.
Those that agreed with that overall was 72%.
Among Democrats, it was 83%.
Independents, 78%, and Republicans, 69%.
And you don't see those kinds of numbers typically these days.
unidentified
No, you don't.
And that kind of constitutional consensus is exactly how amendments surprise ourselves, even.
Like all of a sudden, this thing that seems impossible is like, oh, we all agree.
We can actually do it.
So let's do it.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Oliver, Line for Democrats in St. Louis, Missouri.
unidentified
How you doing?
Good morning.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Good morning.
unidentified
I guess my question really is, is a constitutional amendment the easiest and most straightforward way to go about this?
I mean, because we can, I know you say pressure these representatives, but they themselves are the ones getting enriched off of Citizens United.
So wouldn't it be better to support politicians or support representatives, Republican or Democrat, that want to fix this issue and have a one-issue bill go to the floor, and then we can see everybody that has voted against it.
And then we need to pressure people to vote them out.
So I understand that the Constitutional Amendment may be the most permanent solution, but I don't know how we get there with the current makeup of the current representatives that we have in place.
Well, I think I have some good news there, too.
And your thinking's not wrong.
And the one bill that we could put up, in my view, would be the For Our Freedom Amendment.
That's going to take a vote.
We're going to need 290 votes in the House.
We're going to need 67 in the Senate.
And then we're going to need majority votes in the state legislature.
So that's a pretty good test of who's with us and who's against us.
And I mean the American people.
Who's against the American people who want this amendment?
Let's have the vote and then let's support the people who support it and change the people who don't.
So I don't disagree with the premise, but I think the constitutional amendment is the thing to vote on and let's get it done.
And now let me share some numbers.
We passed the Indiana Senate this week.
It came out of the committee to the floor of the Senate in Indiana, the constitutional amendment proposal.
The vote in the committee was 8 to 0.
The vote on the Senate floor was a voice vote.
So these are the people are voting for this.
We passed in Utah 63 to 9 in the House, 20 to 4 in the Utah Senate.
We passed in the Arizona Federalism Committee on its way to going to the Senate in Arizona.
The vote was 7 to 0.
So I don't think politicians want to vote against this when they know how much, how strongly Americans care about this.
And that's what we do at American Promise to help make sure that we, the people, are heard on this.
And we're putting up the numbers that I think people should look at about whether we can actually get politicians to vote for this.
We keep showing that the American people are capable of exercising our civic muscle and winning some big votes.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
In Mobile, Alabama, Republican line Bill, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Back in the 60s during the civil rights era, northern liberals bought up all the newspapers in the South and thereby controlled the editorials and news reporting that was done in order to prevent other views from being heard.
Now we know that the legacy media, the CBS, NBC, and all are very anti-Trump.
And Twitter used to censor pro-Trump things until Musk bought it and changed it to X. What you're doing isn't going to affect those people.
So the guys who are really running the show are still going to run the show as long as they can buy up the access to media and eliminate the people that they're opposed to.
So Bill, thanks for the observation.
I think your point about media is a real one, and it's one that's been with us throughout histories.
And we'll have to always be looking at concentration of media power.
I mean, we're talking on C-SPAN here.
I'm glad there are outlets like C-SPAN where we can have these kind of conversations.
And that was created in a particular time.
Radio had rules about concentration.
And now we have new forces, as you say, like Twitter now known as X and other social media ways of communication.
So, you know, there's a lot of good things about more and more new ways to get information out there.
And we certainly don't want to infringe freedom of the press.
But we've also been fully capable in this country of dealing with new technologies, dealing with media concentration, and getting some rules in place so that information isn't suppressed, information isn't censored.
And so our constitutional amendment can't do everything, but it will certainly help get a much more functional government and responsive elected representatives to do a lot of the other reforms we're going to need to do, including deal with new technologies.
And we didn't even talk about AI yet, but that's going to be something that Americans, we're going to have to get our handles on on some of these non-human tools that are coming our way.
And they have potential benefits, but they also have potential big risks.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Carl, Independent Line, Indian Trail, North Carolina, good morning.
unidentified
Yeah, I appreciate the discussion.
Fair Funding Debate 00:09:18
unidentified
You know, money drowns out the collective voice of the people.
And I look at this as gerrymandering.
Basically, it's taking out the voice of the people who participate in this democracy, but they really don't have a voice.
It's an artificial voice because money just drowns it out.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
What do you think?
unidentified
I couldn't have put it better myself.
And I think that's what Americans have experienced, is the voices of the people are drowned out.
The domination of multi-billionaire, sorry, multi-billion dollar campaign spending doesn't leave much space.
I remember my friend David Trahan, he runs the Sportsmen's Alliance of Maine, longtime Mainer, and it was the Senate race with Susan Collins' reelection campaign, and he could not buy airtime in the state of Maine because out-of-state money had bought it all up, and he literally could not be heard.
And that's when he decided it's time to get this constitutional amendment in place, and he joined our advisory council at American Promise.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
And isn't most of the money that comes into campaigns spent on media buys, so ads on TV and social media, et cetera?
unidentified
That's right.
And they keep up with technology.
So a lot of it's on the internet and social media, other forms of advertising like that.
But the media certainly, as we all have seen, any of us who've lived through an election in America know now how virtually everything is bombarded now with the campaign ads at that time of year, which is now year-round practically.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
LJ DeForest, Wisconsin, Republican, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hey, good morning.
I wonder how many people actually know what Citizens United was about.
Crooked Hillary was trying to keep a film from being aired during that campaign.
But the reason I called is I'm curious, yes or no, do you know about Act Blue?
Is that a question to me?
Do I know about Act Blue?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
So ActBlue is a fund.
Okay, great.
I'm wondering if you could explain it and what's going on with the lawsuit that has been allowed to go on in relation.
All right.
Sure.
So we've talked about a few new technologies and there are new technologies in fundraising too.
Act Blue is one used by the Democratic Party.
The Republican side has something, I believe, called Win Red, and there's always other new platforms for how to raise lots and lots of money.
There's been some allegations about Act Blue about whether the platform can disguise where the money's coming from.
It can disguise potentially the allegations say evasion of limits by breaking it up into many small amounts, things like that.
So those are some of the allegations, and there's litigation about that.
Again, I think it's another area where we just have an out-of-control fundraising spending problem.
And ultimately, we're going to need rules that work, and we need the constitutional power to make those rules, to have Americans make those rules.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Ronald is calling from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Democrat.
Go ahead, Ronald.
unidentified
Yes.
I have a couple questions.
What about the candidate itself?
If they're all billionaires, can't they control Congress even with your ruling that you're trying to get the constitutional change because they can spend as much as they can on their own candidacy?
ted fraley ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
unidentified
Yeah, so that's, you know, that's also been a long concern in American life throughout our history.
That law that we talked about back in the 1970s that the Supreme Court in the Buckley case struck down had a limit that applied to your own money, too.
So it was like everybody had to play by the same rules.
So if you could raise money if you followed the rules and lived by the limits.
But if you had your own money and you could run past those limits, well, you still had to follow the rules.
That was the law.
The Supreme Court struck that down and basically said wealthy candidates have a right to spend all the money they want if it's their own money.
And, you know, a lot of Americans don't think that's fair.
That should be up to the people to decide whether that should be the case or not.
But it's certainly true right now that there's a much higher concentration of wealthy people running for office and many people who could never afford to serve.
Like we should be able to have a real mix of Americans able to serve and run for office and put up their ideas regardless of how much money they have.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Jim, Pioneer Ohio Independent Line, you're on the air, Jim.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Hi.
Hello.
Thank you for C-SPAN.
I want to put forth what I call a fair campaign finance proposal.
This is a system where rather than donating to a candidate or a party, one would donate to a specific election, like in the mayoral election, for example.
And the simplified thing is the donor gets to pick a most preferred and a least preferred candidate.
The most preferred candidate gets two times as much as anybody else gets.
The least preferred candidate gets a half a share.
That extra half a share goes to pay for the system.
That's my fair campaign.
Jeff.
Thanks, Jim.
You know, the calls today just remind me again why this is such a great country.
There's a lot of people who have thought through lots of different aspects of this and have good ideas.
And, you know, we ought to be able to have this debate and actually implement some of these ideas at the state level and the federal level.
And I'm looking forward to when we have the constitutional ability to do that with the 4-H Freedom Amendment.
And, you know, that could be in the mix.
Some states may decide, hey, let's have some kind of system where we're actually funding the election itself and not just have it be this out-of-control outside money fest.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
Jeff, how do other Western democracies fund their campaigns?
unidentified
Well, some do it kind of close to what Jim described.
They have public funds and they don't have private funded elections.
The UK, for example, tends to do much tighter, short campaigns by law.
So they're also, therefore, much less money spent, but they have limits on how much you can spend.
So no country in the world, as far as I know, prohibits its citizens, no democracy, its citizens from having the ability to decide, should we have limits?
Should we have public funding elections?
Should we have the kind of, if you live here and vote here, you can donate here ideas that we've heard today.
Most countries, most democracies, all of them as far as I'm aware, have the constitutional ability to debate those ideas.
Many of them have implemented those ideas.
We are an outlier, and it's not because we love free speech more.
We do love free speech more.
Most Americans, as the poll you mentioned, Mimi, the overwhelming Americans, 50 years the court has been saying, oh, this is free speech.
This is free speech.
Most Americans are saying, no, it is not free speech.
We love free speech.
We'd like to have more of it.
So let's stop drowning out the voices of the people.
And so that idea of free speech is the one that is really recognized in these different kinds of ideas about how elections should be funded.
And I think it's the way Americans would like to go too.
It's the way we did go before the Supreme Court invented this theory.
We had these kind of different approaches, different rules that made the people have much more of a voice and the government be more responsive to the people.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼
That's Jeff Clements.
He is co-founder and CEO of American Promise.
You can find them at AmericanPromise.net.
Thanks so much for joining us.
unidentified
Thank you, Mimi.
This is Houston, F2, 1-1-60 a second for shadow photography on the sequence camera.
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Artemis Missions: Moon Return 00:00:45
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Watch Saturday, starting at 8 a.m. Eastern, as American History TV sits down with Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Apollo curator Tiesel Muir Harmony to explore Americans in space from the creation of NASA in 1958 through the early Gemini flights to Neil Armstrong's historic first steps on the moon in July 1969.
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