How to Open up the Political Process to Third Parties and Remove some Negative Ads.

I don't think trying to place artificial limits on campaign ads is going to work to clean up politics. There is always a loophole to get around these barriers, always a third party ready to smear on a candidates behalf. I approve this message has been a failure at cleaning up politics.

How about a new course, a change to the system that will help the Green and Libertarians gain some clout while encouraging more positive ads. Let voters cast negative votes against a candidate. When you go into the voting booth you can vote for someone, or against someone. A against vote will subtract one vote from a candidate, a for vote will ad one. In theory you could a person running come out with a negative vote count at the end.

This will clean things up because if one Republican smears his Democratic opponent too much people will no longer vote for the Republican, they will vote against the Democratic candidate. Meanwhile the Democratic candidates voters might be upset over the negative ads and vote against the Republican to punish him. This makes the outer parties more competitive with less votes, because they don't attract the negative as well as positive attention.