Supporting Campaigns Funded by People
The root cause of all problems with politics in the US isn’t that there’s “too much money in politics” it’s where that money comes from.
Most people running for office in the US can’t rely on contributions from average Americans to raise enough to run. Only the people who can consistently get funding from corporations and the very wealthy can consistently afford to run.
Let’s change that.
Statistically we’re much closer to an oligarchy than a democracy. What you think (if you’re not a millionaire) doesn’t have any effect on the laws that actually get passed. Politicians will lie to you when they want to get elected and tell you all about their platform and how they agree with whatever it is you care about.
They don’t.
We’re not represented in congress. The people who would represent us can’t afford to run. Because they get almost nothing in campaign contributions.
The top 1% of the top 1% wealthiest Americans contribute over half of all campaign funding in the US.
Only about half of one percent of Americans give more than $200 in a typical election.
There’s less than 100,000 people in the US giving the maximum to any candidate.
More donor demographics at OpenSecret.org
Political campaigns in the US are overwhelmingly funded by a tiny minority of rich donors. They get to decide who has the money to run, and who doesn’t. This creates a filter on who gets to run and who represents us. If we want congress to actually represent most Americans, then we have to make it possible for more people to run, and we can do that by giving more, to more people.
I found this great site, it’s a really interesting new source of campaign finance data: www.followthemoney.org It has lots of information for local and state races, and the interface is pretty easy to use. Plus options to export the data as CSVs, etc. if you want to do more analysis. I’m going to be exploring …
Funded by Humans – 2020 contribution link at ActBlue Updated the list as of the 2020 election. This is based off data from Opensecrets.org, these are the members of congress who ran in 2020 and: Pledged to not accept corporate PAC donations Raised at least 20% of their campaign contributions in small dollar donations (< …
The first list posted here on Funded By Humans was representatives in the house who ran and won with lots of small dollar fundraising. But now that the 2020 primaries are getting going it’s important to support candidates that are running in those races, these are the people that consistent small dollar fundraising can really …
The way most people give isn’t that effective. We give too late, to too few candidates, and we don’t give consistently.
Don’t wait until you’re 100% sure you’ve found the one perfect candidate to give to. That’s a good attitude to have when we’re voting, we only get to vote for one person in each race, so it makes sense to narrow it down to our one, favorite, choice.
But funding campaigns is different, if we want lots of qualified candidates to run (so we can learn about lots of people and pick the best one), then we have to fund lots of candidates. And if we want regular people to feel confident they can afford to run, we have to provide consistent funding.
Don’t pick a person, pick a cause, or pick some criteria and fund everyone who meets it. Here’s some examples:
Fund candidates that won’t accept corporate PAC money, and rely on small dollar donations (updated as of the 2020 election) here:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fundedbyhumans2020
The Justice Democrats are working to elect a new generation of diverse, working class, representatives to congress:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/justicedemocrats
Our Revolution is supporting a political revolution by and for working class Americans:
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/ourrevolution
Francis Rooney and Phil Roe are the Republicans in Congress who have pledged not to accept contributions to their campaigns from corporate PACs:
https://secure.anedot.com/roeforcongress/donate
https://secure.francisrooney.com/donations