"Should" is a very easy word to throw out. Yeah, elections should be all those things. The problem is the follow up questions of "how?", "what would the unintended consequences be?" and "can we enforce this objectively when the situation gets murky?".
It seems all but impossible to stop billionaires like Koch waging public relations campaigns. If nothing else they'll just buy entire media companies (c.f. Bezos and the Washington Post) and jump in to the fray Fox News style.
It is pretty likely that no-money-in-politics rules would be weaponised against smaller donators. I'm sure there are a bunch of wealthy people who would love nothing more than legal tools to shut down donation-driven groups like the Black Lives Matter website.
Not impossible at all. This is a solved problem in much of Europe. Read about France’s election process. The problem is that elected officials in the US don’t have much incentive to represent the will of their constituency — only their donors. And their donors do not want campaign finance reform because it eliminates their influence. This is not a logistics issue, it’s a corruption issue.
How do you think Europe/France solves for the Bezos-WaPo "problem" whereby wealthy individuals can convert money into political influence indirectly by controlling media companies?
The media laws make it harder to spout propaganda, and the media regulators don't allow these people to buy media, and also well funded public media organisations.
Is it possible? Yes. That's exactly how countries with a post-beta implementation of democracy are doing things and it works well enough (it's never perfect). The only unknown is a migration path for the USA, so many with disproportionate power in the current system would fight that change tooth and nail.
It's pretty straightforward to spot billion dollar ad campaigns. The FCC has carried out its duty to regulate airtime for the better part of a century.
It seems all but impossible to stop billionaires like Koch waging public relations campaigns. If nothing else they'll just buy entire media companies (c.f. Bezos and the Washington Post) and jump in to the fray Fox News style.
It is pretty likely that no-money-in-politics rules would be weaponised against smaller donators. I'm sure there are a bunch of wealthy people who would love nothing more than legal tools to shut down donation-driven groups like the Black Lives Matter website.