Here's something I've always thought would be interesting but it'll never happen…
Let's say there's an election. For the sake of example, let's say it's between two guys named Obama and Romney. Let's say both claim to want a clean election based on facts and free from scurrilous fibs.
So up front, they agree to appoint some kind of Truth Committee. They will pick three or five or any odd number of distinguished journalists, jurists, professor-types or former elected officials whose wisdom and integrity is inarguable. They would jointly fund its operation including the hiring of a squad of researchers selected by the Truth Committee. The candidates would agree that this Truth Committee will be the arbiter of what's factual and what's not. Before either runs a TV ad, it will be submitted to the committee and if they say it's not honest, it doesn't run.
If one candidate makes a claim the other believes is dishonest, the latter can ask the Truth Committee to rule and if the committee says it's untrue or misleading, the claimant would stop saying it. Obviously, his surrogates and boosters could and maybe would continue saying it…but I'd think it would go a long way to knocking down a bogus assertion if authorities that the candidates had agreed were impartial and honest had so ruled.
Imagine if our hypothetical Romney claimed that Obama had raised taxes. Obama invokes the Truth Committee and it demands to see proof and then rules that no, he hasn't. Romney would have to stop saying that and I don't think his supporters would get much traction on the claim after that if they continued saying it. I would think a lot of voters, weary of all this arguing over dueling statistics and conflicting "facts", would accept the verdict of the Truth Committee as pretty definitive.
Or imagine if, say, a hypothetical Harry Reid claimed Romney had not paid taxes for years. Romney doesn't want to release his tax forms for his opponents to wade into but he could divulge them to the Truth Committee and they could say, "No, Harry Reid is wrong. Hypothetical Mitt paid loads of taxes."
There are surely loopholes in this idea and I'm not claiming it's perfect. A candidate would claim that the Truth Committee was biased and wrong but I think he'd look pretty weasely if he did. I'm just thinking it might be a lot better than what we have now and I'm also thinking it will never happen.
Maybe they couldn't or wouldn't even be able to agree on three people they both trust to be fair. Or maybe it's they don't want fair. If a candidate thinks they have a line of attack that will work against their opponent, they don't want to lose it to a silly technicality like there being insufficient evidence it's true. But the idea still intrigues me.