T. GAMBLE: Now here’s some truly meaningful election reform

I am forever amazed at the amount of money we seem to spend on elections these days. People running for state Representative often spend several hundred thousand dollars to win election to a job that pays less than $30,000 a year. Hundreds of millions are spent on Senate and Congressional races.

According to an analysis of the 2022 Federal Election Commission filings, done by Open Secrets, it is projected that candidates in state and federal elections spent more than $16.7 billion dollars trying to get elected to either Congress or some state job. That’s about $50 per every person in the United States.

I don’t know about you, but I did not get my $50 worth. When I spend $50, I want to end up full, entertained, or with some new item I always wanted. There was a time in the not too distant past when $50 could get you all three. At our current rate, $50 will not get me enough gas to get to Atlanta. But I wonder, what in the world could we do with $16.7 billion dollars if we spent it on something useful, instead of on deciding every elected leader in the country is either a pedophile, baby killer or thief from the public trough. Of course, I’m beginning to believe most are, but I don’t need to see a commercial every five minutes to prove it to me.

If my math is correct, a billion dollars is 1,000 million dollars. So we managed to spend $16.7 million-dollar bills. Well, actually, our elected leaders managed to spend 16,700 million-dollar bills. And we wonder why when they get elected they spend money like it grows on trees. To further explain, if you spent a million dollars a day every day, it would take you 45 years and 9 months before you would have spent $16.7 billion.

I hear every day we don’t have enough money for the homeless or the hungry or for mental health … on and on it goes. But we have a million dollars a day for more than 45 straight years wasted so I can watch a candidate play with his dog or hear for the 68th time that an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend said something really bad about their opponent. Note to self: Exes are notoriously bad folks to get information from about their exes. The only thing worse would be if they got their mother to get on TV and say what a good boy or girl they always were.

I think we can do this thing a lot cheaper. If you run for statewide or federal office, you should be required to have 10 debates paid for by the candidates from their campaign money. No money can be spent on ads. The debates must be televised. Questions will be asked of candidates from the opposing candidate’s party by whomever they pick to ask the questions. The debates will be one hour for each side. Each debate will have a set topic.

One debate topic will be the past history of each candidate. This debate will be the most watched. Each side can ask the other whatever they want about the other’s wife cheating, money stealing, prior drug use, or bestiality. I’d pay $50 to watch that one.

Other topics could be foreign affairs, social spending, defense spending, etc., and of course, whether or not you like Donald Trump. Maybe Trump could conduct that one himself and ask each side why they do or don’t like him. Just for fun, we could add Hillary Clinton to ask questions, and Kanye West. I’m not sure what we would learn, but I bet people would watch and I would not have to see a commercial every 15 minutes with part of my $16.7 billion dollars being flushed down the toilet.