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Why I'm not taking any campaign contributions for my presidential run

Zoltan Istvan flag.JPG
Zoltan Istvan. Lisa Memmel

Like many Americans, I was taught from an early age that any natural-born citizen 35 years or older can become president. I’ve always relished that supposed fact. It meant that regardless of class, gender, education, ethnicity, and wealth, one could aspire to what is arguably the world’s most important and powerful position.

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Unfortunately, it was a lie. What they forgot to mention was that you needed money to win the presidency— hundreds of millions of dollars. Naively, I didn’t discover this until I actually began my 2016 presidential run.

Early into my campaign, I became disillusioned with my ability to run for the Presidency. Without the sponsorship of a billionaire funding me (or the ability to raise many millions of dollars), there was basically no chance to be competitive. So I made the difficult choice to not accept campaign funds or donations at all—both as a form of protest and a means of honesty.

In 2014, I declared my candidacy for the Transhumanist Party, a smallish political entity that endorses transhumanism—a social movement that aims to use science and technology to radically improve humanity. For my presidential campaign, I had planned to raise funds and follow the Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules closely. I even visited the FEC office in Washington DC to make sure I understood everything. Sadly, understanding it is like understanding the US tax code—a near impossibility.

The finance rule books I was given by an FEC staff member were overwhelming, not dissimilar from the FEC’s daunting 198 page Congressional Candidates and Committees book presidential candidates also use. As a former journalist for National Geographic and a philosophy major, I consider myself pretty well-equipped to deal with the English language. But nothing could prepare me for the byzantine presidential accounting laws. 

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In the first day of my campaign, I accidentally broke various rules. The finance laws were written for mainstream candidates, not lesser known candidates running smaller campaigns. There are hundreds of us in the 2016 race.

For independents seeking the Presidency, it’s essentially only possible to run as symbolic candidate. The most you can reasonably accomplish is to get public and media attention for your cause and at best a fraction of America’s vote.

Even getting your name on state ballots as a candidate is a herculean task, reserved only for the resources of the super rich. Every state has different requirements and convoluted guidebooks. Some states—mostly the important ones—require huge amounts of signatures and fees.

The donation link on my website is crossed out in red, and leads to a page with a short explanation. I’ve been paying for my campaign all out of my pocket. The one exception is my Immortality Bus, which I crowdfunded over 45 days for just over $27,000 and use to promote transhumanism (and, on occasion, my campaign).

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Crowdfunding is not technically allowed in presidential campaigns. At the same time, special interest groups, lobbyists, and Super PACs dominate elections, funneling tens of millions of dollars to influence the public so their candidate wins. In 2010, US court rulings summed up as Citizens United upped the ante by allowing Political Action Committees to spend unlimited on their candidates, so long as their candidates aren't involved. For example, in 2012, the Super PAC supporting Mitt Romney called Restore our Future took in nearly $100 million dollars.

Immortality Bus
The Immortality Bus. Zoltan Istvan

My candidacy is being run on less than $100,000—a drop in the bucket compared the bigger names. So what can independents do?

We could follow some of the basic rules that Lawrence Lessig tried to put forth in his short presidential campaign. His ideas go like this (taken from his website):

All citizens deserve equal access to the ballot.

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The Citizen Equality Act will guarantee the equal freedom to vote by passing the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015 and the Voter Empowerment Act of 2015. In addition, we will enact automatic voter registration and turn election day into a national holiday.

All citizens deserve equal representation in Congress.

The Citizen Equality Act will give each voter as close to equal political influence as possible by redrawing districts and restructuring election systems. It will use FairVote’s “Ranked Choice Voting Act” to end political gerrymandering and create multi-member districts with ranked-choice voting for Congress.

All citizens deserve an equal ability to choose our leaders.

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The Citizen Equality Act will end pay-to-play politics by changing the way we fund campaigns by taking the best of Rep. Sarbanes’ Government by the People Act, and Represent.US’s “American Anti-Corruption Act.” That hybrid would give every  voter a voucher to contribute to fund congressional and presidential campaigns; it would provide matching funds for small-dollar contributions to congressional and presidential campaigns. And it would add effective new limits to restrict the revolving door between government service and work as a lobbyist.

Adding to this, I’d suggest a system that disallows Super PACs entirely, unless there’s a method to ensure independents can also successfully be included in the system. 

Changing the system of how we vote for a President could be an important moment in history for the American people. No other job on this planet requires such a steadfast commitment of a free and unbiased system to be chosen. And someone's ban account should not decide whether they are considered for the world’s most important job. 

The worst thing I can say about the presidential process right now is perhaps also the one that pains me the most as a patriot: Our presidential election process is incredibly un-American.

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Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, author of The Transhumanist Wager, and the 2016 US Presidential candidate of the Transhumanist Party.

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