America has a myth about campaign finance reform. The myth is that imposing limits on campaign donations will make elections fair.

Note that I try to stay non-partisan. I don’t support one party more than others. And I don’t take sides on issues. I will talk about issues from time to time, but mostly to provide perspective. I’m broaching this issue because the success of PeopleCount will also impact this issue.

Much more would need to be done.

Limiting campaign donations is one thing that could be done. But why do we want to limit donations? Often people say we need to:

lessen the influence of money in politics

This is a much better statement. It includes that we should:

lessen the influence of money in elections

And one way to impact this is campaign finance reform.

Represent.us has focused on this problem for years. They have a detailed plan that addresses the corruption and influence of money in politics. And Lawrence Lessig is advocating the Citizens Equality Act, which expands on it.

But there’s a whole side of this issue that these proposals omit. All of them address the ways that money comes into politics- the supply. I don’t disagree with them, but I think you’ll find interesting how PeopleCount.org addresses the demand side of the problem.

If successful, PeopleCount will lessen the problem that congressional campaigns are often desperate for money. A winning campaign one costs about $1.5 million dollars these days.

First, let’s compare supply and demand solutions in another arena.

Myth: We should stop the import of drugs

A similar myth is that we should stop drugs from being imported. This didn’t work. So we increased our efforts and christened The War on Drugs. We currently spend $51 billion per year on the war on drugs. And by all accounts, our efforts have failed. In fact, that same article says that “one gram of pure cocaine from your typical local pusher … is 74 percent cheaper than it was 30 years ago.”

Something like a trillion dollars has been spent. The result is that cocaine has is now easier to get. Also, over a million people were jailed for drugs in 2014 alone. The drug war has saddled tens of millions of people lives with prison sentences and the limits imposed on ex-cons, and the drug war kills over 1200 Americans per year (and might be much higher). This makes it more lethal than either the Iraq War or the War in Afghanistan.

Supply vs Demand

What appears to work with drugs is not worrying about the supply, but lessening the demand. Portugal had its own war on drugs. After many years of seeing a steady rise in drug use, they realized it wasn’t working. They invested the money in support services for addicts instead. Today, it’s a model for many other countries. Heroin use dropped 50%. New HIV infections have dropped by 95%. Death from overdoses dropped 80% (that kind of drop would save 11,000 American lives per year).

The point is, addressing demand can be a powerful tool.

The demand for money in elections

In the next article, we’ll look at how PeopleCount.org can impact the demand side of money in elections.