Oh joy - more recipes for corruption.

Am I really to believe that the majority of contributors to this debate favour corruption? If they do not support corruption how is it that corporate and unregulated private donations feature so often in the options? Have we asked for personal interest statements from all participants.

Are we prepared to reach a consensus that corruption should be allowed to continue?

Thumbs down to both A and B. Would te team like to go back to the drawing board and try again please.

{Ed. No-one is asking for unregulated doinations. Please see note i). Peter Emerson.} 

A and B tend to consolidate the power of those who have it already. (There may be good reasons for doing this, but I would have to be persuaded).

Both suggest a combination of state, corporate and individual funding. This is not a bad thing in itself. While all have interests to pursue, undue financial influence might be avoided by using a combination of grants, capping and means-testing to equalise the per candidate total. (This might discourage corporate and individual donations, so the government could end up paying more, but that is a separate issue).

However, neither A nor B aims at an equal outcome. Both target funding towards those least in need, and both deliberately create per candidate inequality. Existing parties receive direct assistance to keep their share of the vote, thereby damaging the interests of others in the race.

Perhaps this is offset by the current restraints - I do not have details of those – but if so, the scheme is self-contradictory. If restraints were sufficient to enable fair representation of small parties etc during the election itself, then large parties would necessarily have their large government grants left over.

This is a well-established part of the UK system. I think that having only individual (register elector) contributions makes very good sense. Due to the existing system, i think there would have to be a substantial period of adjustment allowed. Another way out of the problem would be to allow corporate entities to nominate electors who sign up for their contribution.

The whole point of democracy is, I thought, empowering the people.  (Its been a while since I graduated, this may have changed) 

Any democratic system that condones the direct involvement in, and influence over, that system to be weilded by transnational (ie not nationally accountable) corporations is inherently deeply flawed to the point of operating in total contradiction to its purported aims.

In short, linking the state funding to the number of MPs will favour the parties in power, rather than stimulate pluralism, and will explicitly penalise small/new parties.

There are a lot of comments about corruption - all donations going into publicly accountable bank accounts, overseen by the electoral commission - it sounds good, but what happens if/when parties are found with unofficial/private bank accounts? In reality, this questions arises in all systems that are to be monitored publicly - the answer should be the same for every proposed system.

The problem with elected representative-based funding is that it excludes outliers and close-runs at the polls. It hides the political capital of the support won for that vote, and if funds are chanelled by way of elected reps only then the battle for money and power is consolidated even more tersley -possibly at the expense of campaign issues as incentives for monetary greed. Dispersion of funding opens a  panoply of  possibilities for candidates, and limiting it to one or another form may hamper the distribution of  interests that  rely on effective management  in the political arena (individuals, businesses, bulwark of civil services). Independent regulation is essential as the keystone to working through these debates.

Membership fees and limiting advertising campaigns pose another set of issues. As most voters are not registered members of official parties, what kind of resources are necessary to garner support to pay for a better and bigger campaign? What are the limitations in going this approach?  Secondly, by limiting voter access to specific types of advertising this has the effect of cuting off entire groups that would normally be comfortable using that medium regularly.Does this discriminate one group over another just because they don't read newspapers but watch TV, or are in a rural town with no internet access? Perhaps standard setting in campaigns (such as banning smear campaigns) is required, and not necessarily censoring the media.