Money, power, and elections
Subtitle: how campaign finance reform subverts American democracy
By: Rodney A. Smith.
Series: Politics@media
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press; Brand: Louisiana State Univ Pr; LSU Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Baton Rouge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 208
Subjects: Campaign funds -- United States; Democracy -- United States
Description: "Rodney A. Smith thinks that reform legislation has created a new inequality for candidates that, if left unchecked, threatens to destroy the American electoral process by obliterating the foundational principle of free speech. He argues that "money buys speech" and when candidates lack money to buy media time and space they are effectively silenced. Their inability to "speak freely" violates the most significant intentions of our nation's founders: that a sovereign citizenry elect its own leaders based on a free exchange of ideas. For Smith, campaign finance reform has unwittingly unbalanced the checks and balances created by the Framers of the Constitution.".

"After presenting a detailed historical overview of how we have reached the present crisis, Smith proposes a simple solution: institute a process that completely discloses relevant information about campaign donors and recipients of donations. All disclosures would be available to the media, which would be able to investigate and report them fully. Only then, Smith believes, will the United States have the opportunity to be the democratic republic that its founders intended."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: The folly of reform 1; title: The rise and fall of citizen sovereignty; title: Rome : a flawed model; title: Citizen sovereignty : the dearest thing of all; title: The constitution and America's first political campaign; title: American democracy and political parties; title: What is an election, anyway?; title: Political campaigns and money; title: The perceived corruption of money versus the real corruption of power; title: We the sovereigns, not we the subjects; title: The crux of the problem; title: Supreme Court mandates run amok; title: Empirical evidence; title: Freedom of the press; title: Political fund-raising : the current reality; title: The twenty-eighth amendment.