Should negative political ads be banned

Hello Honorable Judges, My name is X and I am on the affirmative side of today's debate "Should negative campaigning be banned" I will start with a proper framework for today's debate. Standard: The standard or the weighing mechanism for today's debate should be the benefits of the society. Now I will start with my arguments Contention 1: Negative campaigning creates voter apathy and prevents accurate reporting of candidates' policies and ideologies. The contemporary political environment throughout much of the democratic world- and especially the USA- is mired in negative and aggressive campaigning. Tactics of this type breed apathy and anomie among groups within society who have previously been politically engaged. Politicians are increasingly portrayed as uniformly corrupt, incompetent or both. Research published by Stamford University in the late nineties has linked an overall decline in voter turnout (approximately 10% between 1960 and 1992) and a further decline in voter roll-off (the likelihood that an individual will vote for a high office, but neglect to vote for state or federal legislative positions) to increased reliance on attack ads and negative campaigning among American politicians. The authors of the Stamford report identify several causative factors underlying this connection. Banning overtly negative campaigning will remove the perverse incentives that distort press coverage of the meaningful, practical details of election campaigns. Consequently, voters will be able to draw on a wider range of information when making their choice at the ballot box. A ban will prevent politicians from engaging in attrition based campaigns designed purely to breed apathy among their opponent's supporters. Participants in the political process should be encouraged to test and investigate each other's policies, premises and ideals. The evolutionary, dialectical pressures that debate of this type exerts will ultimately lead to more refined policy making. In attempting to do more and offer more to voters, politicians will be forced to survey and interact with a wider range of potential supporters than they normally would. Contention 2: Existing methods of disciplining and controlling candidates are ineffective. Many political parties- even those in operating in the US- claim that regulation of the content of political campaigns is unnecessary. Parties assert that they supervise and monitor the content of their candidates' statements. Self-regulation is claimed to be in parties' own interests. However, ensuring that individual candidates maintain good standards of conduct and are disciplined for infractions goes only half way to ensuring that campaigning remains honest and equitable. Articles written and speeches made by candidates can easily be monitored for misleading or litigious content. However, the most intractable forms of negative campaigning often occur indirectly, without being explicitly associated with a particular political figure. Due to the frequency with which candidates' activists and survey staff make contact with voters, there is the danger that they could be used to propagate negative messages via word of mouth campaigns. Tactics of this type were successfully employed by the radical socialist George Galloway to oust a Labour incumbent in the UK constituency of Bethnal Green and Bough. Allegations later emerged that Galloway's door-step campaigners had made ad hominem and racist comments against his opponent. It is unacceptable that a candidate should be able to maintain a "clean" image by using his electoral staff to make negative attacks by proxy. Finally, limiting negative campaigning in the press will address the incentives on politicians to pursue campaign strategies oriented solely around garnering publicity. One of the first examples of negative campaigning, a 1964 television advert produced by Harry Truman, which implied that presidential candidate Barry Goldwater would initiate a nuclear war, proved so controversial that it was replayed in news broadcasts, effectively granting additional, free campaign coverage. The press is already confronted with too many engineered leaks and scandals. As noted above, these obscure more cogent analysis by neutral experts and commentators. Contention 3: Negative campaigning leads to negative governance. Information on demographics, on taxation rates, on the state's finances are made publically available precisely so that voters can arrive at reasoned, rational and nuanced decisions as to whom they should vote for. Governments are judged by evidence of the efficacy of their policies. Analysis conducted by political scientists William Riker, Michael Davis and Michael Ferrantino show that where negative campaigning is permitted, even politicians with no history of running attack campaigns will adopt aggressive electoral tactics. If a politician wins on a positive platform- by promising to implement new policies and reform existing ones- then his chances of re-election will be affected by his success or failure in bringing about those changes. The electorate is able to test and assess a politician's positive claims. However, if a politician campaigns on a negative platform, portraying his opponent as incompetent or his policies as damaging, an electoral victory will make such claims unassailable. The attacking politician will be free to state that his election has prevented the dire consequences he warned from coming about. Non one will be able to prove otherwise, notwithstanding the spluttering of his defeated opponent. Moreover, negative portrayals of candidates and policies, as noted above, are more likely to dominate media coverage, than the sober, balanced information produced by academics and analysts. This line of argument also leads to equally damaging distortion of the attacking candidate's platform and proposals. By diverting resources to negative campaigning and attack adverts, candidates have less time and money to expend on the creation of positive policies. Indeed, the fewer testable claims that a candidate makes about his own policies, the less likely he is to be subject to effective criticism by opponents or the electorate if he takes up office.