Who Is Ken Bennett Endorsing
Who Is Ken Bennett endorsing? Ken Bennett is endorsing Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Salmon as governor of Arizona. Bennett wants to improve voters' confidence and created an Arizona Voter Bill of Rights that expands accountability and transparency.
Since the national electoral reform, Arizona has had a financing regime for parties and national electoral campaigns based mainly on public contributions. The norm was applied in three electoral processes and served as a framework for exercising the usual financing of the parties.
This informality has detrimental effects on the transparency and integrity of democratic institutions. It interferes with the right of every voter to make an informed vote, facilitates the capture or influence by interests of particular groups, and creates the risk that party and electoral politics are financed with money from illicit activities.
Who Is Ken Bennett endorsing and why?
To encourage the formalization of political financing, he endorsed Matt Salmon. Bennett comments:
Support contributions from legal entities (companies and unions) to parties and campaigns, with maximum amounts that prevent the predominance of one donor or sector and exclude those with a conflict of interest. Reconsidering this would help encourage the formalization of campaign contributions that are made informally or through parties.
Have a mechanism for online declaration and monitoring of party and campaign activities. These tools would allow the immediate publication of the contributions and expenses of ordinary financing and electoral campaigns, speeding up the reporting and publication process and facilitating control by the enforcement authority and social control.
Streamline the opening and operation of voter ID accounts and sub accounts via electronic means. Implementing more agile collection mechanisms related to opening accounts and sub-accounts at times compatible with campaign periods would make it easier for political parties to operate them and encourage them to make their finances transparent.
Encouraging new technologies such as web pages and telephony could help the parties' and campaigns' financing.
Extend the campaign period so that it begins when the term for the registration of pre-candidate lists expires before the general election or, as the case may be, the second round of elections. In this way, the most intense proselytizing activity unleashed when the per-candidates are made official would be included in the campaign period.
Hold alliances accountable. Provide that alliances cannot be dissolved until their campaign surrender has been approved so that the parties that comprise them cannot consider forming new agreements if their surrenders are not in order.
Prohibit advertisements and publicity throughout the campaign period. Regulate the uses and distribution of official advertising so that it cannot be used for biased purposes or to promote public awareness of government officials.
Matt Salmon is here to address equality guaranteed by allowing all parties and candidates access to the mass media. On the other hand, there are strong indications that most party and campaign spending occurs informally, either in the form of unreported contributions and spending or the misuse of public resources for limited purposes. Bennett recommends moving towards a more transparent and effective financing system for parties and campaigns.