>>Such a public service doesn't seem to exist here. I don't know whether PBS counts; and if it does, I haven't seen them give a chance to each political party at equal terms. Not that I'm watching PBS much... only BBC news.
>
>If all the parties got equal air time, I think the election process would be way too tidious. It's too long and tidious as it is now. There seems to be at least 30 political parties as it was listed on this thread. How many of them are for real and how many of them are just for kicks?-who knows.

Well, you watch them and then you know.

Long and tedious? Of course. Even the size of the country doesn't matter - any way you organize the elections and the campaigning, it can't be made much simpler or shorter.

But this way, all of them get an equal opportunity (does this phrase sound familiar?), at least in one publicly accessible place, regardless of how much money they can collect.

>I think even PBS is loyal to who their biggest contributors are. If Democrats are their biggest contributors, then they'll probably cater to them more and vise-versa for Republicans.
>
>I don't know about The campaign finance reform. I think it's a two edge sword. While reducing the amount of contribution allowed would cut down on soft-money and all, I think it would really hurt the "not-so-rich/not-so-popular" candidates because it will make it ever more difficult to raise enough money to make a serious run. They need that big contributors that they never seem to get anyway.

Which is just another iteration of the same endless loop - they can't get the contributions because they are unknown, and they are unknown because they can't pay for air time, and they can't pay because they don't get the contributions.

I don't know what exactly is proposed in the campaign finance reform, but if there's a limit to the money that can be poured into it, then I figure the minor players would stand a better chance. They wouldn't be kicked out of the game by simply raising the bet beyond what they can risk, not so easily.

Don't you get the feeling the system is rigged so you get to choose between Pepsi vs Coke, and mention of other manufacturers' drinks is carefully discouraged?