"Fueling the growth in political ads this cycle is the presidential race, which has so far seen record primary spend on the Republican side.
More than $100 million was spent through September on Republican primary races, faster than any previous cycle, per political AdImpact, an advertising intelligence firm."
Imagine if political ads were federally funded with the stipulation that no other funds must be spent on advertising…
Of course, that would be too sane for the U.S.
Better: no ads. Give them a website to publish their resume. Make buying airtime illegal.
I don’t mind things like flyers. They let me know where local candidates stand and I wouldn’t know to go to every website. But endless TV and internet ads are way too far.
A single ballotpedia like website would be my preference, but that raises censorship questions.
Apparently formula does something similar with thier team budgets. In that the League will penalize them for going over. With age of internet it’s crazy to spend billions.
It’d be nice, but I genuinely don’t see how that could be accomplished without a constitutional amendment. And even then, you have the deeper issue of how to regulate speech that isn’t directly associated with the candidate. It’s not a big improvement if you have some billionaires just throwing their money around, while a candidate they oppose is legally barred from raising money. I don’t see a way to actually implement something like this in a practical way when the stakes are as high as they are. Ultimately, the reason this market is so big is because it truly is that important, and no amount of legislation can really change that. Block traditional TV and radio ads and it’ll just shift even more to social media. Block direct campaign social media ads and the money will shift to a bunch of bots and astroturfed viral campaigns, which can’t be easily blocked without also blocking individuals’ ability to express their politics, which would absolutely, and rightly, violate the First Amendment.
Edit: I’d also just add that the people at large ultimately play a role here as well. If ads didn’t work, if we actually formed our views and voting habits based on facts and policies and nothing else, then there wouldn’t be a point to ads. But we’re fundamentally emotional beings and so here we are.