This man is running for president just to get money out of politics
LatestLessig, a Harvard professor, announced on Sunday that, after a successful $1 million crowd-funding drive, he would be running to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
There’s a twist, though. Lessig is running on a very particular platform. He says he will only stay in office until one bill, the Citizen Equality Act of 2017, is passed. That bill is meant to fix what Lessig says are the corrosive effects of money eating away at American politics.
“In this presidential race, 400 families have given half the money that has been raised in the election cycle thus far,” he told Fusion’s Alicia Menendez in August. “Every politician knows if they don’t keep them happy they have no shot at getting elected.”
The Citizen Equality Act would introduce new campaign finance restrictions and give voters vouchers to donate to federal election campaigns. The bill would also seek to curb the gerrymandering of districts, overhaul the voting system and increase the protections for the act of voting itself.
“What we’re trying to convince people of is that this system makes all of these hopes, these bold ideas, hopeless until we find a way to fix this corrupted system,” Lessig told Menendez.