News
What would you do with four billion dollars?
November 14, 2014
by Dave Ryan
When you went to the polling booth Nov. 4, you may have waited patiently in line to cast your ballot for your favorite candidate(s), and other than your time, the voting process cost you absolutely nothing – nada – zip.
Did you know that prior to you casting your free vote, nearly $4 billion was spent on the 2014 mid-term elections in the U.S.? The gubernatorial elections in Illinois and Florida alone cost approximately $200 million!?!
If you do the math, and forget the population of each state, $4 billion dollars equates to approximately $80 million dollars per each state in the U.S.
In Illinois, the governor is paid approximately $177,000 per year, and in Florida, approximately $130,000 per year. Yet in each state, the money spent to elect a governor approached $100 million this year.
Hypothetically, if you were in business and I told you that for a $100 million dollar investment, I could guarantee you a job for four years at $130,000 a year, you would shake your head and walk away. In politics, they call that a great deal.
To put this in a local perspective, it has taken the Legacy Foundation, Lake County's wonderful not-for-profit community foundation more than 20 years of hard work to accumulate $50 million dollars in endowed funds.
These endowed funds will last forever, as the Legacy Foundation uses the accrued interest to provide grants to local nonprofits throughout Lake County - education programs, scholarships, the arts and cultural events - and everyone wins! In politics, $4 billion dollars are spent and who wins?
The State of Indiana has 92 counties, and each county has at least one community foundation. Think of the impact in Indiana alone if each state had an additional $80 million dollars (per election cycle) to dedicate to these foundations?
In 2016, we will elect a new U.S. president, and who knows what new scheme will be developed to waste more money on the election process. Note that since 1998, approximately $29 billion has been spent on our election process— just imagine what that amount of money could do to cure many of our social ills in the U.S.
Can you imagine an election with no advertising? No hidden PAC donations? No special interest groups throwing money at candidates to steer votes? Just an election whereby citizens would go to the polls and vote for their favorite candidate? Would it be utopia, or just as it was originally planned at the first Constitutional Convention? Think about it.
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