Stifle big money in politics! Don't infringe on political speech! Back, forth, up, down, and around go the arguments for and against any attempt to control the amount of money going into political campaigns. The one thing everybody appears to agree on is that it have become very expensive.
One of the ideas floated is that there should be free time on TV for political candidates. Free to who? The broadcasters would resist, rightly so, the mandating of giving away time, especially prime time. If the time was subsidized by the federal government, what rate should apply?
Why not reserve a couple of channels to be operated by the federal government? To qualify for use of the channel, candidates would need to get so many signatures, an existing requirement to be on the ballet in many states now.
The government would break the time into short, medium, and long spots randomly throughout the day. Then it would assign spots randomly each day to qualifying candidates. It would be up to the candidates to either appear live or provide a tape for their spots. The candidates could change their tapes as often as they wish. These spots would also be made available on the web.
The financing would be by the income tax checkoff as is now done to allocate public funds to candidates.
