Many people are now calling for complete public funding of elections by taxpayers, meaning that people's tax dollars will go to candidates...in an...

Laws are attempts to regulate behavior of individual and
societies. This does not mean that laws fully achieve their intended objectives. There
have been laws against crimes like theft and murder for thousands of years, but that has
eliminated such crimes. The question is not just of desirability of laws to regulate
election spending, but also of practicality of developing and implementing such
laws.

If the purpose of the law is to reduce the spending
on elections by the candidates, this purpose can be achieved, at least theoretically, by
enacting a law putting a limit on maximum spending. But fact is that there are ways of
bypassing such laws. In India a law of this kind is in force. But the candidates are
able to flout this law flagrantly without getting caught by
law.

I believe, public funding of election expenses will
not have much impact on controlling election expenses or in creating a level playing
field for the candidates. It will only increase the complications of allocating and
accounting for public funds.

We have been too much
preoccupied by the concern for controlling the influence of unfit and unscrupulous
candidate. I think better results may be achieved if we adopt the positive approach of
improving the means of creating better leaders, of assessing and identifying their
fitness for representing the people, and then conveying the result of such assessment to
people in simple terms without fanfare and expenses of election
propaganda.