What does it mean when a candidate accepts public financing?

[question everything]

How does it affect the campaign?

BTW, we always check that box on our income tax returns..

[MethuenProgressive]

1. After saying he/she wouldn't?

He/she gets applause from his/her supporters.

[zippy890]

2. one thing it means it that the candidate

is probably not raising the private funds they would like to be.

[Cameron27]

3. Right now, with no campaign finance laws enacted,

I see it as a last resort to stay in the race.

[NoodleBoy]

4. it means they can only accept so much money or kick in so much of their own in the campaign

it's not a fully publicly funded program, just partially.

on the federal level, it's only for presidential races.

[question everything]

6. I think that the limit of $2,300 per donor

per election cycle holds, regardless of whether the candidate accepts public funding, no?

[NoodleBoy]

8. yeah, that's what the floating limit is set to, but when a candidate accepts public funding

they can only raise so much money on their own, and would have to start refusing donations or returning them.

[Bitwit1234]

5. For one thing

I think Edwards is dead wrong about this...If he, Hillary or Obama or any of the others win the nomination, it would be suicide for them to accept public financing. You know darn well the republicans wont. So this would mean the republicans would be free to run as many ads and other types of campaign ads they want, while the democrat candidate would be limited to the public finance set amount.

THE ONLY WAY THIS WILL WORK. Is if all candidates, republican and democrat have to follow and can only use public financing.

[ProudDad]

7. Public financing will work when...

All publicly funded candidates receive an amount at least equal to their privately funded opponent...

We CAN'T limit funding of privately funded candidates due to a fallacious assumption on the part of the Federal courts that corporations are persons.

It would be easy to write into the law that all privately funded candidates money be matched for the publicly funded candidates. That would be "legal"...

It would be cheaper than the current system since the corporations would no longer have the incentive to outspend the publicly funded candidate -- since they couldn't. Therefore, their influence on our politics would diminish.

Right now, the "public financing" is a joke...entirely inadequate in corporate capitalist Amerika...