My idea for campaign finance reform is as follows. Each state would open an office of campaign finance. When a person declares his/her candidacy for any office, they must register there and are given an account number. ALL campaign contributions are made to the finance office in the candidate’s name, and is posted anonymously to their account. The amount of any individual donation is secret. Only the total dollars in the account is known. ALL campaign expenditures must be made from that account.
If a candidate were to find out where a donation came from, say at a cocktail party, then the donor and the candidate are charged and sentenced for bribery, and the donation in question goes to the opponents campaign. This insures that the parties will police each other. Anyone or any PAC or corporation can give as much to a campaign as they wish, but it will be anonymous. This assures that donations are made purely on the candidates stance on issues. A corporation can claim they gave to a candidate, maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, there is no way to tell and the claim itself is bribery.
No can do. Publicly held corporations would have to report it on their 10k.
However I like the idea of state held accounts. I would go one better. State races could only accept donations from citizens of that state and corporations are banned from donations.
By doing this you remove corporate and business bribery to candidates. Also, I would limit soft money Pacs to say 5 million per party. They can distribute it however they please, but once it is gone, it’s gone.