This Amendment also adds necessary campaign conduct safeguards to the Constitution directly.

If we continue to pay for campaigns by granting spenders tax exemptions,

campaigns will continue to be conducted at the corporate sphere’s ethical level.

RepairRestoreSafeguard.org

Sole Public Funding Enforces 

​Campaign Ethics 

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How can the public control the ethical conduct of campaigns?We have a right to oversee what we are paying for,but tax exemptions are not immediately reviewable by the public as they are taken after the year is over, too late to prevent or affect conduct.

• If we continue to pay for campaigns by granting spenders tax exemptions, campaigns will continue to be conducted at the corporate sphere’s ethical level. Only the courts can have any say, and their impact is limited. 
• If a local, state or Congressional Act establishes budgetary funding with an independent body to fund campaigning, its rules will be subject to that legislature’s discretion. And it won’t have to require spenders to meet ethical standards.
  
  

This amendment establishes it as a budget item instead. 

• Only mandatory sole funding of campaigns through a budget allocation gives the public control.  
  
• Since the function won’t be established by Congress, even if a body is created to administer grants, Congress will have no power to remove its funding, either at first or later (see Statute vs Constitutional Amendment, Sole Public Funding Safeguards Elections). 
  
• Grants won't just be made among parties in power.
  
• The other sections of this amendment increase the public’s power in the political process, making elected officers more accountable to us. Congress answers to the people regarding annual budget expenditures. 
  
  
• When it’s a budget item, it’ll be much easier for the public to add conditions by statute. 
  

This amendment adds necessary campaign conduct safeguards to the Constitution directly. For example:

• All aspects of elections must be run impartially. 
  
• Elections must be contested.
  
• Titles and descriptions of Acts must be true and accurate.
  
• Granting for campaigning must be "in public view", transparent in real time. 
  
• Uniform granting prevents favoritism initially. Standard criteria prevent favoritism later.
  
• Content-neutral granting criteria protect freedom of speech.
  
  

See the amendment for all of the safeguards. There are many; the Constitution barely addresses ethics in the political process. 

• By addressing campaigning in the Constitution this amendment also removes campaigning from the political question category completely, allowing the courts to take all cases The restoration of the Preamble (see Restoring the Preamble) will make it possible to win in court.
  
  

Today, money not spent on campaigns remains in candidates’ war chests for future campaigns. If we don’t like someone's work in office we can’t take unspent money back. And while that money isn’t supposed to be spent on anything else the IRS is very liberal about what can be considered campaign spending, even after the election. Some officers have been prosecuted for treating their war chests as personal slush funds.    

• Legislation will be able to require that unused funds at the end of the year return to the general United States budget for the next year, preventing a slush fund from developing in Congress.  
  
• And since grants will require specific performance, no granted amounts will be left over.​
  

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Donations to candidates and parties are still not deductible. But there are other abuses involving donations to spenders.                                                        

• For example, now that the courts have found foreign governments can donate to campaigns, only taking control of funding can prevent it (see Foreign Governments and Campaigns). 
  

• And now that donations to issue PACs and some other spenders are unlimited, corporations can potentially run their own candidates, like parties. Recent rulings and statutes create the possibility of corporations acting as mini-parties, but entirely self-interested ones. Funding by budget item prevents this.
  

Private financing of campaigns is becoming a larger and more complex problem every year. Although nothing can completely prevent abuse, sole public funding gets us off this slippery slope now.

How can the public curb private-sector influence on government? Without mandatory sole public campaign funding, we can't. Even though the public pays for most campaigning (see You Already Do), PACs and other large spenders are in a position to exert inappropriate influence (see Preserving Consent in a Democracy, the Constitution and Politics). When candidates become beholden, government waste and fraud result, and interests are judged not by their values but by how much money they have. By funding campaigns through the budget instead of by tax exemptions, we keep candidates from forgetting that the public is actually footing the bill.

This form of influence is ended completely by this method, but there are other ways private influence creeps into the process. See the rest of this amendment, particularly Leashing the Gerrymander and Balancing Access Inside Congress.  ​.