Jack Hitt

Jack Hitt, a writer for the New York Times Magazine and other publications, argues that radical solutions might be necessary to limit the influence of special interest money in elections while maintaining a voter’s right to give money to a candidate. In the following viewpoint, he describes a proposal by Yale University law professor Ian Ayres and Stanford University economist Jeremy Bulow in which all campaign donations would come in through a blind trust. People would still have the ability to contribute to like- minded candidates, but would not be in a position to claim credit and expect specific favors from them. Hitt compares this proposed reform to the secret ballot, a nineteenth-century political reform that also was made to combat political corruption.

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