If I stand outside a voting center and promise to give each person 1000$ a month for the rest of their life if they vote for a candidate I like, that’s illegal.
It I stand om stage at a campaign and promise that, it’s called Universal Basic Income, is a legitimate policy suggestion and perfectly acceptable campaign promise.
So where’s the line ?
I understand the answer. My question is simply, why isn’t the answer to my comment also the answer to OPs Post ? Legally, the questions are pretty much equivalent, yet I get downvoted to hell for mine, but OP finds nothing but agreement. You people are applying the law differently, because you dislike Trump, but like UBI. And whilst I agree that UBI would he good, amd Trump sucks major ass, the law does not, amd should not, care about that.
Both situations are a politician promising to pass legislation that gives voters unconditional financial benefit, if the politicians win their election.
You’re all hypocrites. Yes Trump is a piece of shit, yes he almost certainly has no intention of following through with this, and yes his motivations are absolutely disgusting, but purely legally it’s no different from any other direct financial campaign promise, and if you can’t accept that just because Trump is a piece of shit, then you have a problem.
One is just handing out money and the other is passing a written law on the books through the entire legislative process.
Edit: expanding on this since you seem genuine and not a concern troll:
The point of the legislative process is that there are checks and balances. If you write and pass a law, the courts can challenge it. In the end if the law stands it has a much more legitimate mandate from the people.
Also laws are not written and passed by one person, you have to get enough majority consensus from the entire legislative body. Skipping that process is called a dictatorship or monarchy.
(He also has a long history of not paying, but that’s not relevant for the legal difference)
You don’t happen to know if other have successfully argued on court that since they had a history of not paying, it is understood by everyone that they were not genuine and would not pay?
Australian politicians have been repeatedly making popular promises around election time, then quietly not doing anything about them after the election.
Candidates who are unlikely to be elected have also been making near impossible promises. They know that the promises don’t need to be realistic because they won’t be elected, but loft promises will still bring them more votes and more media time.
There should be some form of penalty for not completing an election promise once in power, and any party already in power should only be promising things they’re already working on.
So the non encumbant party/candidate can promise to work on ALL problems in a country, but the encumbants are legally prevented from promising to do so, even if they genuinely and legitimately plan on doing so, and simply can’t start working on ALL of them at once, and therefore had to limit their current work ?
And wouldn’t this just encourage encumbants to start half baked unmotivated work on every issue imaginable, so they can use those issues when campaigning, instead of focsuing their effort on a few important issues, and actually doing something effective to fix those, because that would actually severely limit their campaign talking points.
In your system, governing effectively and efficiently becomes detrimental to a parties ability to campaign.
No, it’s not remotely shifting the goal posts. You explicitly said encumbants shouldn’t be allowed to campaign on fixing issues if they’re not already working to fix those issues.
What I wrote is a direct and obvious consequence of such a law/policy, the goal posts haven’t moved a fucking mm.
And sure, some sort of promise or prevention for that would be great, but it’s effectively impossible to codify it into law in a way that isn’t easily exploitable, circumventable or just has worse consequences than the thing it prevents.
The difference is that when someone campaigns on UBI, they are talking about laws that they want to pass, through the entire legislative process. Please also see my edit to my first comment that I wrote at the same time you were asking this question.
Can’t tell the difference between “I will pay you to vote the way I want” vs “I will fight for progressive policies to set a minimum standard quality of life”, smh
Did you even read my comment ? I never even came close to claiming the two things are morally/ethically the same, I literally state exact opposite explicitly more than once.
But legally both situations are a politician promising to pass legislation that gives voters an unconditional direct financial benefit, if the politicians win their election. How are the situations differently LEGALLY ?
If I stand outside a voting center and promise to give each person 1000$ a month for the rest of their life if they vote for a candidate I like, that’s illegal.
It I stand om stage at a campaign and promise that, it’s called Universal Basic Income, is a legitimate policy suggestion and perfectly acceptable campaign promise.
So where’s the line ?
I understand the answer. My question is simply, why isn’t the answer to my comment also the answer to OPs Post ? Legally, the questions are pretty much equivalent, yet I get downvoted to hell for mine, but OP finds nothing but agreement. You people are applying the law differently, because you dislike Trump, but like UBI. And whilst I agree that UBI would he good, amd Trump sucks major ass, the law does not, amd should not, care about that.
Both situations are a politician promising to pass legislation that gives voters unconditional financial benefit, if the politicians win their election.
You’re all hypocrites. Yes Trump is a piece of shit, yes he almost certainly has no intention of following through with this, and yes his motivations are absolutely disgusting, but purely legally it’s no different from any other direct financial campaign promise, and if you can’t accept that just because Trump is a piece of shit, then you have a problem.
One is just handing out money and the other is passing a written law on the books through the entire legislative process.
Edit: expanding on this since you seem genuine and not a concern troll:
The point of the legislative process is that there are checks and balances. If you write and pass a law, the courts can challenge it. In the end if the law stands it has a much more legitimate mandate from the people.
Also laws are not written and passed by one person, you have to get enough majority consensus from the entire legislative body. Skipping that process is called a dictatorship or monarchy.
So then what’s (legally) the difference between a candidate promising UBI and what Trump did ?
Trump is already in power and could give the money at any time. He is deliberately tying it to voting.
(He also has a long history of not paying, but that’s not relevant for the legal difference)
You don’t happen to know if other have successfully argued on court that since they had a history of not paying, it is understood by everyone that they were not genuine and would not pay?
So then why isn’t EVERY campaign promise by the encumbant president/party problematic in the same way ?
In my opinion️, they should be.
Australian politicians have been repeatedly making popular promises around election time, then quietly not doing anything about them after the election.
Candidates who are unlikely to be elected have also been making near impossible promises. They know that the promises don’t need to be realistic because they won’t be elected, but loft promises will still bring them more votes and more media time.
There should be some form of penalty for not completing an election promise once in power, and any party already in power should only be promising things they’re already working on.
So the non encumbant party/candidate can promise to work on ALL problems in a country, but the encumbants are legally prevented from promising to do so, even if they genuinely and legitimately plan on doing so, and simply can’t start working on ALL of them at once, and therefore had to limit their current work ?
And wouldn’t this just encourage encumbants to start half baked unmotivated work on every issue imaginable, so they can use those issues when campaigning, instead of focsuing their effort on a few important issues, and actually doing something effective to fix those, because that would actually severely limit their campaign talking points.
In your system, governing effectively and efficiently becomes detrimental to a parties ability to campaign.
That’s shifting the goal posts a bit.
Some form of prevention for knowingly making false election promises is a good start.
No, it’s not remotely shifting the goal posts. You explicitly said encumbants shouldn’t be allowed to campaign on fixing issues if they’re not already working to fix those issues.
What I wrote is a direct and obvious consequence of such a law/policy, the goal posts haven’t moved a fucking mm.
And sure, some sort of promise or prevention for that would be great, but it’s effectively impossible to codify it into law in a way that isn’t easily exploitable, circumventable or just has worse consequences than the thing it prevents.
The difference is that when someone campaigns on UBI, they are talking about laws that they want to pass, through the entire legislative process. Please also see my edit to my first comment that I wrote at the same time you were asking this question.
Yeah I agree. There’s a lot of campist motivated reasoning in these threads.
direct payment in exchance for a vote.
the former in your example benefits even those who do not vote for you.
Can’t tell the difference between “I will pay you to vote the way I want” vs “I will fight for progressive policies to set a minimum standard quality of life”, smh
Did you even read my comment ? I never even came close to claiming the two things are morally/ethically the same, I literally state exact opposite explicitly more than once.
But legally both situations are a politician promising to pass legislation that gives voters an unconditional direct financial benefit, if the politicians win their election. How are the situations differently LEGALLY ?
One difference is that you’d be lying avputbthe former whereas the latter would be a political thing you’d kinda have to do
A) who says I’m lying
B) in what utopia do you live where politicians never break campaign promises