Many of the winners of today’s judicial elections will decide to
take a large lump sum taxpayer subsidy to run in the general
election. There even is a good chance that two subsidized
candidates will run against each other in the general elections.
As a result, you can pick between two candidates that you have
supported financially (even if you didn’t know it).
As a result of our taxpayer financed judicial campaign system,
we all get to fund judges in their run for elected office. Most
people will find it a little troubling to know that they are supporting
candidates and speech they oppose. In the name of “clean
elections,” the government gets to force you to support these
judges. The First Amendment is just an inconvenient roadblock to
ensuring that we have “clean elections.”
Some are even proposing
to expand this unethical campaign finance system to other elected
races. It is ironic that to ?fix? the system and get money out of
politics (which can never be done), the legislature’s solution is to
give taxpayer money to politicians. North Carolina is creating a
new welfare state, and the beneficiaries are politicians.
Higher
taxes, compelled speech, chilled speech, lower voter turnout,
subsidized negative advertising, and harm to democracy. These are
all the great things we get from taxpayer financed campaigns. My
latest report details why we need to get rid of our judicial campaign finance system ASAP.
