This sounds like a very promising initiative. However, you’re asking for advice, so I’ll try and identify potential problems.
The platform would collect money from donors to both campaigns; let’s say for example that Harris donors give us $10 million and Pence donors give us $8 million. We would send matching amounts ($8 million on each side) to charity and donate the remaining amount to the political campaign that raised more ($2 million to Harris).
When I pretend I’m a Republican evaluating this proposal, I think: “If the campaign goes forwards as normal, about 44% of the ads will be for Pence and 56% for Harris. That’s not great, but it is alright—our message for America will shine through. On the other hand, if we implement donation matching, 100% of the ads will be for Harris. That sounds apocalyptic. It might even start cutting into our base because people will start to think that no one agrees with them.”
You could address this by asking Democrats to match $1.25 for every $1 of Republican ad spend, so extreme donation matching means $0 spending on ads, but Democrats might find this to be unfair.
Extreme donation matching is a rather unlikely scenario of course, so it might be better to pitch something more realistic such as “Harris gets $9 million, Pence gets $7 million, $2 million goes to charity”. Actually I think maybe that is in fact what you’re talking about? Still, there might be room to improve the framing.
Another thought: I would guess that political ads fall into two basic categories:
Get out the vote ads
Reaching out to swing voter ads
The first kind of ad probably increases political polarization. However, the second kind could reduce polarization—it seems like so much political discourse these days amounts to playing telephone on what a candidate originally said or did, and I wonder if there is some value in people hearing from candidates directly to know what they really endorse. Additionally, swing voter ads inculcate in party bosses the habit of trying to understand the preferences of people who might not fit squarely within their base, and figure out how they might appeal to those preferences.
My guess is many people who would participate in such a donation matching scheme think polarization sucks. I wonder how they would feel about the matching funds to go towards some kind of anti-polarization organization.
Thanks for the thoughts. I agree that the first thing you point out is a problem, but let me just point out: in the event that it becomes a problem, that means that our platform is already a wild success. After all, I’d be very happy if our platform took out single-digit millions of money out of politics (compared to the single-digit billions that are spent). If we become a large fraction of all money going into politics, then yeah, this will become a problem, perhaps solvable in the way you suggest.
Regarding your thoughts on ads, that seems like a plausible hypothesis. But regarding matching funds going toward anti-polarization organizations: well, I’d be quite interested in that if there were effective anti-polarization organizations. And maybe there are, but I’m not aware of any, and I’m not super optimistic.
I think the Center for Election Science, an EA organization that advocates approval voting, could be an effective anti-polarization organization. There seems to be widespread dissatisfaction with the 2-party system, and I believe it’s contributing significantly to polarization.
There’s something rather delightful about money being matched from Republican and Democrat donors in order to fund an organization which aims to get rid of the 2-party system :)
I agree that the first thing you point out is a problem, but let me just point out: in the event that it becomes a problem, that means that our platform is already a wild success.
Alternatively, people will predict this and then refuse to use it in the first place in those cases.
This sounds like a very promising initiative. However, you’re asking for advice, so I’ll try and identify potential problems.
When I pretend I’m a Republican evaluating this proposal, I think: “If the campaign goes forwards as normal, about 44% of the ads will be for Pence and 56% for Harris. That’s not great, but it is alright—our message for America will shine through. On the other hand, if we implement donation matching, 100% of the ads will be for Harris. That sounds apocalyptic. It might even start cutting into our base because people will start to think that no one agrees with them.”
You could address this by asking Democrats to match $1.25 for every $1 of Republican ad spend, so extreme donation matching means $0 spending on ads, but Democrats might find this to be unfair.
Extreme donation matching is a rather unlikely scenario of course, so it might be better to pitch something more realistic such as “Harris gets $9 million, Pence gets $7 million, $2 million goes to charity”. Actually I think maybe that is in fact what you’re talking about? Still, there might be room to improve the framing.
Another thought: I would guess that political ads fall into two basic categories:
Get out the vote ads
Reaching out to swing voter ads
The first kind of ad probably increases political polarization. However, the second kind could reduce polarization—it seems like so much political discourse these days amounts to playing telephone on what a candidate originally said or did, and I wonder if there is some value in people hearing from candidates directly to know what they really endorse. Additionally, swing voter ads inculcate in party bosses the habit of trying to understand the preferences of people who might not fit squarely within their base, and figure out how they might appeal to those preferences.
My guess is many people who would participate in such a donation matching scheme think polarization sucks. I wonder how they would feel about the matching funds to go towards some kind of anti-polarization organization.
Thanks for the thoughts. I agree that the first thing you point out is a problem, but let me just point out: in the event that it becomes a problem, that means that our platform is already a wild success. After all, I’d be very happy if our platform took out single-digit millions of money out of politics (compared to the single-digit billions that are spent). If we become a large fraction of all money going into politics, then yeah, this will become a problem, perhaps solvable in the way you suggest.
Regarding your thoughts on ads, that seems like a plausible hypothesis. But regarding matching funds going toward anti-polarization organizations: well, I’d be quite interested in that if there were effective anti-polarization organizations. And maybe there are, but I’m not aware of any, and I’m not super optimistic.
I think the Center for Election Science, an EA organization that advocates approval voting, could be an effective anti-polarization organization. There seems to be widespread dissatisfaction with the 2-party system, and I believe it’s contributing significantly to polarization.
There’s something rather delightful about money being matched from Republican and Democrat donors in order to fund an organization which aims to get rid of the 2-party system :)
Naturally, as the ED for CES, this is my favorite idea!
Alternatively, people will predict this and then refuse to use it in the first place in those cases.