We've all seen the commercials from the astroturfing interest groups, which as the NY Times documentedthis week, are so frequently front groups for super-wealthy elite and Republican interests. In the wake of Citizens United and Congress's inabilility to pass the DISCLOSE act, there's nothing we can do this cycle to stop them this election cycle, right?
WRONG!
The solution is simple. Every union and interest group... any interest group that wants to be taken seriously from the AARP to the NRA... should, when running issue/campaign ads for or against a particular candidate, include a ticker across the bottom of the ad disclosing their finances. There should be a voluntary standard established on what should be included. And you would need an independent, reliable organization that could verify the advertisement is disclosing the standardized data in their ad, and some sort of recognizable logo to certify the ads meets the standard so voters to get to know and trust.
Why? Because it opens the books on these groups in a very public way that any enterprising investigator, journalist, citizen could obtain and research. Not just a simple link to the website, serious financial info. Also, and most importantly, voters will be able to clearly see who is and who is not disclosing their finances, who is willing to be an adult and put their name on the statements they are making.
Admittedly, 99.999999% of voters won't use that financial data. But what the voters do get is a sense of which organizations are credible and which ones are not because they do or don't disclose the information. If an issue advocacy organization with an innocuous name wants to be taken seriously by savvy voters, they need to have that information.
Sure, that's a lot of what ifs, maybes, and might blah blah blah. But, it's a beautiful day and this just popped in my head and wanted to jot it down before I try to block out politics for a few hours.
Go ahead folks, trash it, rip it up. The floor is yours. I'm going outside!
And in the meantime, go the Orange to Blue page and throw a few bucks the way of these great candidates.