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Comment by dools | Hacker News Reader

I'd go even further and ban ALL political advertising.

Politicians should have a page on the electoral commission's website, like a university professor's page on the university website.

People can type in their postcode on the website, see who's on the ballot and look at their policies, then vote on the date.

No campaigning. No advertising. No flyers. No social media. Nothing.

Randomise the position on the ballot.

If people go to the polls on the day with no idea who to vote for, it will be a better outcome than people having been manipulated with big money through aggressive media campaigns to vote one way or the other.

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Alternative suggestion: allow ads, but all spending goes to a shared pool which is split equally between all candidates. If candidate A collected $1M and candidate B collected $500k, they both get $750k to buy ads and they can place them only in evenly and randomly distributed fashion. The ad can only say "Vote for XXX, find more at (www)/(phone)", so the ads serve only the purpose of discoverability of the candidate program.

I'll be honest, I've been tempted by this idea before. But it really feels like "engineers navel-gaze solutions to social problems".

At the bare least, there are valid reasons to vote for someone beyond what they say on their policy statement. And social media and campaigning allows them to engage with voters and answer questions. And without a least a bit of the election circus I wonder how many people will disengage with the process, causing elections to lose legitimacy and be decided by a small number of zealous party loyalists.

I'm not arguing for a blanket ban but please elaborate why I need to see a poster by a local candidate on every 2nd tree on the road I take.

Maybe it would help if the laws were stricter that they need to take them down sooner after the election or are not allowed to put them up so much earlier, but still.

The social problem for me is that I am forced to look at xenophobic right-wing propaganda when going outside. Or just plain lies "we did a thing" by the ruling party, where thing is 100% provably not true, but because of weasel words they are allowed to do this.

Fair enough, that seems bad.

And I find this idea to be great. Now, why would someone that wants to be re-elected go and shoot themselves on the foot?

Keep in mind that majority of politicians do this for a living and some don't even hesitate to jump ship/parties as long as they keep their chairs in committees, etc.

At some point you need a new broom.

It seems that's been the function of revolutions and coups for centuries, although occasionally a natural disaster provides the opportunity.

However, there is another concept from ancient wisdom, designed to break the inevitable cyclic stick-slip "sawtooth wave" of periodic violent reset.

It is the "Jubilee" [0]

In modern terms we'd have something like; every generation all political offices become null and void. Nobody who has been in any office for more than a year can ever re-enter politics. It would also be helpful at that point to break up too-large corporations and cancel debts.

It's like controlled burning.

Much of the misery and stagnation we face today is down to a lack of planned destruction.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_

This will not prevent big money from influencing politicians through various means.

Also a lot of the voter influecing is done through almost invisible campaigns such as the "carbon footprint" or neo-liberal content in tv soaps and the like.

In Poland political parties are funded mostly from country's budget (depending on last election results), not from donations. Donations are only allowed from normal people, not from corporations. PAC-s equivalent are rare.

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