A. Basic proposal
Over two billion dollars were spent on the 2012 US presidential election. About half this total was spent to make Obama win and Mitt Romney lose; most of the other half was spent to make Romney win and Obama lose. In aggregate this was incredibly wasteful, and there should be a better way of influencing an election than throwing money into a zero-sum game. Instead of funding opposing advertisements, campaign money should support programs that everyone considers to be beneficial; that is to say, it should go to charity.
It should be possible to make a nonprofit that would implement this, and here’s how it could work. The nonprofit, which I shall give the placeholder name of Altruistic Partisanship, would run a website on which people could make donations. For each donation, the donor would specify a political candidate (or party) she wishes to support as well as an apolitical charity. Altruistic Partisanship would hold onto the money until the end of the current month, at which point the total amount of money raised for each candidate would be tallied up. The candidate who has raised the most money this way will receive a donation equal to the amount of money that candidate has raised in excess of what the opposing candidate has raised. The remaining money (equal to twice as much as was associated with the less-preferred candidate) would go to the charities specified by the donors.
Here’s how it could work. Suppose that Clinton raises $1,000,000 through Altruistic Partisanship and Trump raises $800,000. For each Clinton donor, 1⁄5 of what they donated would go to the Clinton campaign and 4⁄5 would go the charity or charities they specified. For each Trump donor, all of what they donated would go to their preferred charity. Clinton’s campaign would receive $200,000, Trump’s would receive nothing, and $1,600,000 would go to charity.
As for the marginal effects of a donation, suppose someone were to have donated $100 through Altruistic Partisanship and specified Hillary Clinton as her preferred candidate and AMF as her preferred charity. If Clinton raised more through Altruistic Partisanship, the marginal effect of this donation is that Clinton’s campaign would have an additional $100 (just as if she donated directly to the Clinton campaign). If Trump had raised more, the marginal effects of this donation would be a $100 reduction in Trump’s campaign funds, AMF receiving $100, and the (apolitical) charities preferred by Trump’s supporters receiving $100.
If Trump’s campaign lost a dollar, Clinton’s campaign lost a dollar, and a charity got two dollars, would anyone be worse off?
I have drafted a proposal for a nonprofit based on this idea. I’m looking for two kinds of help: 1) people who would like to take the idea and run with it, and 2) feedback regarding the feasibility of this idea or how it might be improved.
My draft is in the subcomments, and includes a description of the plan as well as a list of questions and concerns. I lack both the skills and the health to move this idea forward, and I would welcome any of you who can.