[flaja]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Forgive me for not having a detailed plan worked out in advance and ready to implement. I don't know how you'd set the limits. I only know how the limits are set in my country. I barely understand how your political system works. I do consider that lobby funding may feed into partisan politics as it has the potential to harden up party differences in line with lobbies.

The U.S. has something like 300,000,000 people while the U.K. has around 60,000,000 the last time I checked. Furthermore, elections in the U.S. can cover wide areas whereas the whole of the U.K. would only take up a few U.S. states.

And lobbyists are not the cause of partisan bickering in the U.S. since lobbyists for business and industry tend to give to both parties so they will have something to hold over the head of whichever party wins the next election. Expanding ballot access to include 3rd party and no-party candidates would help stop this.

There is a fairly tight spending limit on election expenditure over here. But, that only applies for the official election period. The rest of the year the parties can spend money upping their profile.

We often have that here as office holders are perpetually running for re-election.

The limit in council elections is £600 + 0.05p per registered elector for the ward (approx. 8400 electors in my ward). That worked out at around £1020. For everything, printing, postage, telephone bills, admin, ink, paper, rosettes, posters, etc. etc.

Do incumbents in the U.K. have the franking privilege whereby they have free postage for anything they want to mail to their constituents? Members of Congress have this power (but I don’t think the President does), so incumbents could easily outspend any limit imposed by law.

I have no idea. I do not have an intimate enough understanding of your political scene to make any such judgement about the individual politicians.

Consider yourself lucky. I know quite a bit about U.S. politics and find most of it nauseating.

I see no reason why that must be the case. There comes a time when the debate must be brought to a close and a vote entered into.

What do you do about political issues that no office holder wants to make an issue of? Inaction can come from a failed vote whereby something that is needed is not done, but it can also come from failure to debate to begin with. Prior to the U.S. Civil War the House of Representatives had a gag rule, whereby any resolution or bill regarding slavery was automatically tabled. For years the issue of slavery couldn’t even be discussed according to the rules of the House of Representatives. As it stands now, anything that any member of either House of Congress wants to introduce can be tabled by a majority vote of his respective House. Ignoring controversial issues can be just as bad as debating them endlessly.

Yes, they would. And they would also go out of their way to take fewer risks in debate. I would not want my elected representatives to be hamstrung in such a way. Inside that chamber they should be able to say anything they wish. If one lies, another may stand and set him right.

What risks can there be in debating an important public issue with a civil tongue and mutual respect between political opponents?