Frequently Asked Questions

So many people reasonably feel this way. The good news? You don’t need to. The money to get elected should come from the federal budget. Not out of your pocket.

You can bet they will! That’s why we have to be very clear on the ground rules. It needs to be administered by nonpartisan governmental or other groups.

We also must define the rules and keep it very simple. We also need to demand the people in power not change it to their advantage.

Simplicity is critical. Basically:

Each voting age citizen has $100 credit assigned to them yearly. The money doesn’t go to them, but they control which candidate(s) it goes to.

The money can be used for any candidate who has registered for any election. On any level in the U.S. including local. Local elections are the training grounds for our future federal leaders. How they use this money would be subject to the usual federal laws on using campaign contributions.

Any candidate who accepts this money has to agree to full transparency. They have to show the original source of every dollar they receive from anywhere, and how each dollar is spent.

The process would be administered through a nonpartisan government or independent organization. The contribution designated by each citizen would go directly from the U.S. Treasury to the candidate’s campaign fund. It cannot go to any organization. Only to individual candidates.

With approximately 200 million American citizens of voting age, this would translate to $20 billion yearly if everybody did it. Not everyone will, and it more likely will cost about $10 billion a year. This is enough to balance the approximately $4 billion in large donor contributions.

Given our $4.5 trillion annual federal budget, this is less than 1/10 of 1%. The cost of not doing this is far higher, as "our" representatives pay back the massive bribes (called "campaign contributions") that we force them to take from industry.

If they can’t save $10 billion per year this way easily, then we need to fire them all and start over again!

Not at all. We do not blame them for doing what our system disastrously allows, and even encourages, them to do. In fact, I suspect many, if not most, wealthy people will support this.

Nor are we looking to curtail their contributions. The Supreme Court has ruled that this is not an option anyway, and we are not likely to see an amendment changing this in our lifetimes.

The wealthy often serve an important leadership position. Many of them do this with great moral responsibility. Sadly, some do not. We are simply looking to create a check and balance of power between the very very wealthy, and everybody else. In reality, right now 99% of our population has very little real power.

It is exactly these kinds of checks and balances, built into the American system by our Constitution, that allows it to thrive. For example, the checks and balances of power between the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court. In the same way, this will allow most of the power to reside with the population at large.

You can be certain that the very wealthy will use their money as a "rudder" to steer the ship of popular opinion. It will then be up to us, the citizens, to separate truth from nonsense. But that’s how democracy works.

Currently, it doesn’t even matter if we do so.