Fair Elections
ByThis guest post comes from Molly Beacham, Director of Development for Democracy North Carolina. I met Molly at Mamacitas several weeks ago, and we discussed the progress of publicly funded elections. Molly sent this along via email and asked if I’d share it here:
“Thanks for having me at Scrutiny Hooligans! I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this ongoing conversation.
A couple of weeks ago I sat down with colleagues from Democracy North Carolina to talk about their work to expand fair elections to political races across the state. These guys have exposed the problem of excessive political money for years, and from their viewpoint things are getting worse, and maybe MUCH worse after the U.S. Supreme Courts Citizens United ruling.
Democracy North Carolina helped win public campaign financing options for state level judges and for NC Commissioner of Insurance, NC Auditor and NC Superintendent of Public Instruction. They’ll be back next year, working to expand the offering to more NC races. In the meantime, a bill to provide optional public campaign financing to congressional candidates is getting more traction than ever in the wake of a Wall St.-induced financial crisis, a corporate insurance-dominated healthcare debate and the tragic Gulf oil spill. Candidates spend way too much time dialing for dollars, and too often the cash comes from agenda-driven special interests. There is another way!
Please encourage Congressman Shuler (225-6401 in Asheville) to sign on as a co-sponsor to HR-1826, the Fair Elections Now Act. Also, please use this link to ask Senators Burr and Hagan to co-sponsor the Senate companion bill, S-752. For details on the bill, go to Fair Elections Now, or call Molly at Democracy North Carolina (888-687-8683 ext. 12)”
5 Comments
August 16th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Thanks, Gordon, for helping spread the word. Everyone knows money in politics is compromising our elections and policies. Too few know about public financing as a partial fix! We must demand fair elections from our leaders. Let’s all tell the candidates that we want reform NOW!
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August 17th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Considering the SCOTUS ruled corporate funding of elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment, how is public financing going to help?
After all, anyone running for office that opts for public financing will be working at a disadvantage against corporate-funded candidates.
While I’m 100% in support of public financing, and will fire off an email to Shuler to support this initiative, it seems too little too late at this point in the game.
- pvh
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August 17th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
The Citizens United ruling, allowing corporations and unions to fund elections directly from their treasuries rather than through PACs, is indeed disheartening. There will be TONS of outside money flowing into races. That means we need public financing now more than ever. Yes, candidates will be vulnerable to attacks from outside interests, but public financing would allow someone without wealth or access to wealth to at least have a fair shot at presenting a platform. We’ve long been concerned about candidates spending too much time fundraising rather than focusing on policy. With the floodgates of special interest money wide open, this will only become a bigger problem. The only real solution is an optional, alternative source of funds for folks who demonstrate their viability by raising a large number of relatively small contributions from a broad group of voters in their state. In the meantime, we need to be mindful of who’s funding which ads. The names for the campaign funds are likely to be euphamisms for some bad actors. Sadly, it’s a situation of voter beware! Thanks for helping demand reform!
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August 18th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Bear in mind that this is a SCOTUS that was packed by at least one illegitimate Republican president. There ought to be an effective mechanism for removing those judges who were put there by one or more men who never should have been president in the first place. Lifetime appointments are supposed to shield justices from undue political influence, but if they bring it in with them there is no removing the taint, not for decades.
Every system has flaws which can be exploited by “viruses,” as it were; this is in the very nature of systems; and so it is necessary for the system to evolve to stay ahead of them. This is the organizational reason for the maxim “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” and Jefferson’s notion that a revolution might be necessary every twenty years or so.
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August 24th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
In lieu of money, I would rather see free air time for candidates that meet requirements similar to those in this bill.
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