Is Count My Vote actually Count My Contribution? [Contributor]

The initiative commonly referred to as Count My Vote is presented as an effort to give greater access for all Utah citizens to the electoral process. This is to be accomplished through greater reliance upon Primary Elections for selecting party candidates.

This post is neither the time nor place to discuss the vast field of issues and arguments presented by proponents or opponent of the Count My Vote initiative (“CMV”). Hence, one aspect of my view-point will be offered up for consideration.

On January 21, 2013, David Irvine, attorney for Utahns for Ethical Government, made the following comment regarding situation surrounding Attorney General John Swallow.

Our laws are so lax that it’s impossible to determine where all of the money is coming from. No one knows who is footing the bill for many Utah politicians or what private agenda is driving these huge, untraceable contributions. Limiting the size of campaign contributions would greatly alleviate this troublesome situation.

This comment should not be interpreted as Irvine speaking to the merits of the CMV proposal. I have no knowledge of his disposition regarding the initiative. Yet, his sentiment expresses a fair concern of a vast number of caucus delegates across the state.

Many local delegates and statewide political leaders worry about and have expressed concern for the consequences of CMV. In fact the Hurricane City Council passed a resolution encouraging voters to not sign the petition supporting CMV. According to online news sources “Without caucuses, Hurricane Mayor Tom Hirschi said, only rich people could be politicians.”

Quoting again from the same opinion piece noted above from Utahns For Ethical Government (“UEG”), David Irvine said:

During Swallow’s recent campaign, Shurtleff’s Utah’s Prosperity Foundation then contributed close to $300,000 to Swallow’s campaign. At the least, these events should lay to rest the notion that visions of big contributions do not have a corrupting influence on otherwise honest men and women[.]

(Emphasis added)

Earlier this year, on May 24, Kim Burningham, a former state legislator and head of UEG, added this observation:

“Public records in Utah reveal politicians do little to seek financial support from their neighbors and much more to rake in the dollars from sycophantic donors with self-serving purposes.”

As we look at the forces of influence on this issues around CMV, we see lining up with the most massive support in favor those with a preponderance of capital assets. Opposing are a vast group of individual with modest to moderate financial influence, yet a social capital in the form of citizen interest in preserving a system that does in fact work.

Again at the Hurricane City Council meeting, “State Republican Party Vice Chairman Willie Billings said that the people with a lot of money realize that with grass-roots movements like caucuses, a lot of money doesn’t make as much of a difference in politics.” He went on to assert that “without a caucus, residents would just hear about candidates in television ads, minimizing the chances of truly vetting a candidate.”

Some may argue that the propensity for mass marketing persuasion justifies strong restrictions of campaign finance. That is an argument for another time and article. What is asserted herein is that the greatest means and measure of integrity within the electoral system is broad-based voter participation in representative government processes. In other words, the current caucus system forces honest discussion down to the level of the neighborhoods. In neighborhoods, neighbors rely on and trust in their neighborhood representatives to assure candor from candidates…rather than cash induces platitudes.

As the old saying says “You can fool some of the people all the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”. The cash dependent Count My Vote initiative seeks establish an opportunity to fool most of the people most of time.

William Way is a former city manager, political campaign strategist/manager, and conservative public policy gadfly.