BY THE NUMBERS

Everyday people complain about how bad things are yet on Staten Island where we have over 200,000 voters and only about 75,000 voted last Tuesday.



So the next time you want to complain first ask yourself if you were one of the 125,000 Staten Island Registered voters who didn’t vote.



Just if you weren’t paying attention



Bloomberg spent over $100 million and got 557,000 votes. That’s about $175 a vote.



Alex Zablocki spent $17,000 and got 157,000 votes. That’s about $9.25 a vote.



But here’s the real shame.



Alex filed 30,000 signatures to get on the ballot while Bloomberg only filed 21,000.



But Alex was excluded from all the debates because his campaign didn’t raise enough money.



And you still think we don’t need campaign finance reform.



By the way these candidates keep building up their campaign war chests with millions and wind up spending it on lawyers when they get caught.



Great system we have here.



We should require that 90% of all excess funds be either set aside for community projects or returned after each election.



But we know that will never happen.



So why don’t we try this.



Ban the use of campaign funds for legal costs.



Any excess campaign funds after an election must be used to repay any matching funds that were received.



And here’s an easy one.



We give the candidates one week to take down all their signs.



We ask organizations to set up sign collections after the week grace period.



We then charge their campaigns $10 a sign that is turned in.



We set up collection sites and reimburse the organizations for the signs they collect.



We would probably raise enough money to stock a food pantry every year.



We know none of these will ever be implemented but we will keep trying.



Dennis