What do these two pictures have in common? Upon a recent visit to Albuquerque New Mexico I've found the connection. Anyone interested in running for mayor in "the Q" has to resort to panhandling to even be considered for candidacy. A campaign finance law passed in 2005 requires those interested in the office to collect about 3,300 individual $5 contributions in a 45-day period if they want to go the public funding route.
Bottom line: If you arent independently wealthy enough to finance your own campaign, you need to convince thousands of people to cough up $5 for you to run. And it doesn't matter if someone gives you $5 or $500 -- they still just count as one $5 contributor.
While this may be easy for incumbents or sitting councilmembers interested in the seat or people with 3,000+ facebook friends, it would be near impossible for an unknown challenger to convince people to give up a five-dollar-foot-long to give him a shot in hell's chance of being a candidate -- not to mention actually winning the seat.
This is just not democracy as it was intended. People should be supporting candidates by voting (what a concept) instead of worrying about giving money to every possible candidate to level the playing field and inevitably losing money on the candidates who didn't win or couldn't collect enough contributions to even make it on the ballot.
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