Lawrence Lessig may run for president on clean elections platform

Share
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig. Photo by Lessig2016.us, used by permission.

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig has launched an exploratory campaign to run for President of the United States in 2016; his main issue is to give individual voters more power in elections by reversing the tendency of big money in elections.

Each election cycle, it seems, sets a new record for campaign spending, breaking the record of the previous election. That trend has accelerated since Supreme Courts decisions like Citizens United.

Lessig says he has come up with a way to “hack the system” by becoming a referendum president and resign as soon has he has passed the Citizen Equality Act. That would potentially make his vice presidential running mate very powerful.

It also raises the question that with so many issues a president has to deal with would Lessig’s focus on citizen equality in elections take away from dealing with pressing concerns like the economy, ISIS, civil liberties?

There are other candidates who say they want to take big money out of elections (like the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Democratic U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders) but Lessig they have a plan to get elected but not to get campaign reform passed.

During our interview on WMNF News’ MidPoint on 24 August 2015, Seán Kinane asked Lessig about these and other issues.

Listen to the interview here:

https://soundcloud.com/wmnf/lessig2015

Leave a Reply

  • (will not be published)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

You may also like

Ahead of the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, Tampa protestors prepare to rally again

Listen: This weekend will mark the fifth anniversary of the...

2025 Hurricane Season Outlook FPREN
The National Hurricane Center predicts above-average activity this 2025 hurricane season

National Hurricane Center: 2025 expected above-average activity; 13-19 named tropical...

The Scoop: Thur. May 22, 2025, Tampa Bay and Florida headlines by WMNF

WMNF headlines including bear hunting, book removal from schools, children's...

education
Ron DeSantis signs a bill addressing training for school security guards and other measures

The bill requires that school security guard training be conducted...

Ways to listen

WMNF is listener-supported. That means we don't advertise like a commercial station, and we're not part of a university.

Ways to support

WMNF volunteers have fun providing a variety of needed services to keep your community radio station alive and kickin'.

Audio After Hours
Audio After Hours