To: The United States Senate
A Constitutional Amendment to Clean Up Elections
A proposed amendment to the United States Constitution
All candidates for public office shall receive public funding as their sole means of election underwriting in an equitable manner as prescribed by Congress and the individual states. No candidate for public office may accept election campaign compensation in any form from any private source, nor can any elected official and his or her commercial associates retain as a client or accept any compensation from any person or entity doing business with or advocating before a public trust.
No media outlet may receive compensation in any form from any person or non-government entity for advertisements either promoting or detracting from any public candidate’s election campaign. This shall not be interpreted as an abridgement of the freedom of the press to report and comment gratis on any candidate or of the right of the citizenry to advertise viewpoints on public policy.
This amendment will take effect on January 1st in the year following its ratification. All private monies still retained for any public election shall be returned to their contributors. All prior campaign debt shall be nullified.
Why is this important?
This is a petition to propose a constitutional amendment to end bribery by political donation. It takes a heap of money to run for political office these days, and with few exceptions, our elected officials have placed their public trust in the hands of those groups which can underwrite their election campaigns. Thanks to the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, our elected representatives now represent us in name, while they represent the bundlers, the lobbyists and the moneyed interests in deed. Dare it be repeated—this is bribery.