When Lobbying was Illegal

Alex Mayyasi notes that the First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the Government. However, Teachout was discussing a case in 1866, many years before corporations were granted First-Amendment rights. Indeed, I believe that only public-interest corporations were legal in 1866.

It was a very different time. So it goes.

The author was in Africa, thinking about how E-voting could help to reduce the costs of voting. Which sounds great, but then, why is the formal voting process today, with voting booths, neutral polling places, private voting, etc. so sacred to democracy?

Two major problems come up when votes are not secret: intimidation, and vote buying. Leading to harassment and electoral fraud. We have already fixed this problem now here in the public, using the secret ballot. We are taught it in school and use it wherever we need a fair democratic process.

Except in one place - Congress. All votes are recorded and public, just see govtrack.us to see how your Congressman voted. But hasn't it always been this way? Even from the first Congress, with Yea or Nay votes recorded? No, it hasn't...

There is a little-known bill called the 'Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970', which introduced the electronic vote buttons into Congress, and records the vote for each bill by each Congressman. Before these buttons, they would mostly not record each vote individually. This bill overwhelmingly passed at the time, with no discussion about the problems this total transparency in Congress would introduce.

There has been no discussion since either! No pieces anywhere discussing this bill as a root cause since the bill passed in 1970. Kennedy was the only one that mentioned anything about the danger of transparency - as it would turn Congressmen into 'seismographs of public opinion.' But what actually happened was worse.

Since it takes a lot of money to run for elections, it is easy to turn to lobbyists to raise money. With transparency, lobbyists can directly see if the bills they want propped up are being voted for. Endless congressman admissions of the problems: “There aren't any poor PACs, Food Stamp PACs, or Medicare PACs.” A more complex tax code has ushered in a huge increase in complexity in the financial system since the 1970s, and led to even more lobbyists from Wall Street. “But once lobbyists knew your every vote, they could use it against you.” Almost all giant lobbying organizations (ALEC, Heritage Foundation) were founded only a year or two after this bill. Congressmen cannot vote their conscience anymore, they are pressured to vote for whatever the lobbying firm or corporation wants. Bills are basically introduced by special interests now.

The nice thing, is that there is an easy solution - reintroduce the secret ballot in Congress. AKA, a $5 Cardboard Box to have Congressmen vote in private. It's a tough pill to swallow as it goes against the nice idea of having transparency, especially at the highest levels of government. But we must reintroduce it if we ever want to have a Congress that is not controlled by lobbyists and corporations, one that is truly democratic.

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Really interesting video, definitely merits some discussion somewhere about the problems that total transparency in Congress can create.

Alternatively, you can always threaten to fund someone else in the next party primaries/election.

It would be much better to ban all lobbying, so each candidate would only have a very small amount o fmoney to spend on elections, and people would be less manipulated into voting them.