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I believe, but cannot prove, that we (society) could largely achieve the same ends without violating the First Amendment:

1) Switch from winner-takes-all to approval voting.

Largely eliminates negative campaigning. Counteracts drive to partisanship.

2) Restore Fairness Doctrine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

3) Publicly financed campaigns

Greatly reduce effectiveness of pay to play strategy.



There's no way to restore the fairness doctrine in any meaningful way. It only ever applied to broadcast licenses.

The way it was justified was that there's a natural limitation on the amount of spectrum, so the government has an interest in ensuring that not all channels on that spectrum are Fox News.

The spectrum gets more irrelevant by the day as more TV moves to cable/Internet, and people in general get their news from the likes of Facebook instead of TV. There's no natural limitation on the number of channels on cable or Internet, so the government trying to police speech there would be ruled unconstitutional.

Your #1 suggestion is doable, but would require something just short of a successful revolution to pull off. #3 likewise, you'd need a constitutional amendment due to Citizens United.


#1 There's a variety of goofy primary systems. One could argue that approval voting is the logical conclusion of top-two or jungle primaries.

#3 Public financing reforms have thus far been a bottom-up effort.

As for #2, we'll see. The backlash to social media is pretty intense. There's an opportunity in there some where.




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