I read on my Facebook page a post by a really cool comic book creator how bad the US looks with all the support Trump is getting and all the money pouring into the races. That the United Kingdom “does it right” limiting campaigns to 6 to 8 weeks and how much money can be spent.
Sure it sounds good, but how would it work in reality? (Because real life and what sounds good often does not work when you try it.)
The UK limits the total amount a single party can spend on an election to around $33 million...but has something like 60 different parties, so it COULD spend over $2 billion in an election cycle if all parties met the cap. (The US spent $1.7 billion in 2012 on all elections). Now the 60+ parties don’t spend that much so total spending is much lower.
The UK prohibits tv, radio, and media advertising of any “matters of political or industrial controversy”. So ads about how bad fracking is or corruption in government can’t be aired, you can’t put the achievements of Joe Politician while in office.
So how do they get elected?
The UK is not like the US. The Prime Minister (PM) is not elected at a national level like our President is. The PM is just a Member of Parliament (MP), but is picked by the members to be the “prime” minister. This is like the Speaker of the House being the President.
The PM runs in his district, then gets the majority of the MP’s to pick him as Prime Minister. So the rest of the nation has zero say in who that is directly.
Now there is that cap on spending and ads though. So how can they get informed voters to the polls? (Ok, I know, you’re laughing that any politician wants informed voters).
They do it by direct mail and lots and lots of personal visits and rallies. Incumbent’s spend lots of time in their home districts — and since the UK is small, a person can drive across the long way in under 13 hours. (try that in CA or TX). So it is very easy compared to the US to get back to your district between sessions and pump the flesh. Challengers have the advantage of not having to leave the area.
Also in the campaign season, no votes are set while they campaign. Sanders got a lot of flack for staying in DC to do Senate work instead of campaigning, while Paul got a lot of flack for not staying in DC to do Senate work to campaign. (yeah, you can’t win no matter what you do in politics)
Another way is that the districts are small. UK has 650 seats with districts that have 50 to 80 thousand people in them. Compare that to the US where 435 congressional districts have around 750,000 people in them. You can reach a large number of people personally when you’re trying to get hold of 80,000 in a very small geographical area, heck TV ads and radio really don’t make sense because the coverage would cover several districts. But try that with the 750,000 in a congressional area. Not going to happen. Ads make more sense because coverage is closer to the district.
What if the US wanted to do what the UK does?
Well, first off, we would have to change the Constitution.
Ok, lets ignore that for the though experiment. If we shrank the districts to 80,000 (and got rid of the Senate and President) the US would need 4,275 Congressional Districts...and Paul Ryan would be the President. (but then so would have Nancy Pelosi).
I’m not sure where we would put all these representatives to meet to vote, or how we would pay them the $108,000 a year, which is lower than the $174,000 for our Congresscritters but would be much more expensive: US $76 million a year vs the pretend $462 million in salary for 4,275 reps.
I don’t see this as a good thing, pork would go through the roof, nothing would get done, and most government responsibility would shift to the states letting people like Scott Walker and Kim Davis to run things that are really Federal Constitutional responsibilities.
I might be wrong.
But I think the idea of the US moving to a UK system is really a bad idea. About the only way it would work is if the US broke up into 40 or 50 smaller nations, but then we would not be the US any more.