Maine voters could restore 'clean elections' system
Maine voters will have a chance when they go to the polls on Nov. 3 to undo some changes made by the U.S. Supreme Court that damaged the state’s revolutionary “clean elections” public financing system passed by voters in 1996, according to The Huffington Post.
The system allowed anyone to run for office, and at one point Maine had the most blue-collar legislature in the country.
The 1996 Maine referendum provided candidates with a lump sum of public funds if they met a threshold of fundraising in $5 increments from voters in their districts, according to the publication. Candidates were further provided matching funds if their opponent was funding their campaign with their own money, or if an outside group was spending over a certain amount on the race.
The clean elections system debuted in 2000 and by 2008, 85% of legislators were running with public funds.
“Maine’s law in '96 was a landmark,” David Donnelly, president of the campaign finance reform group Every Voice and head of the campaign to enact Maine’s 1996 initiative, told The Huffington Post. “It was the first of its kind in the country. People all around the country work to replicate it... The experiment worked — not just the fine details of it, but that you can create a system of small donations.”
Passage of the referendum allowed waitresses, teachers, firefighters, convenience store clerks and others to run for office and win, the publication noted.
But in 2010, the Supreme Court expanded the ability of corporations and unions — and, ultimately, wealthy individuals — to spend through outside groups. And in 2011, the high court found that providing public funds to match outside groups and self-funding candidates was a limit on the free-speech rights of those groups and candidates. Participation in Maine's public funding system dropped to 51% in the 2014 election, according to The Huffington Post.
A referendum on the Nov. 3 ballot proposes reforms to the current system that would replace the now-nullified matching fund system with a program to allow candidates to continue to collect $5 checks and qualify for another grant of public funds. It also would further increase disclosure by requiring all express political advertising by outside groups to display a disclaimer showing the group’s name and its top three donors. It would require gubernatorial transition committees and inauguration committees to disclose their own donors. Lastly, the referendum would increase penalties for campaign finance violations.
"Even for some people, five dollars is a stretch," Andrew Bossie, head of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, the principal group backing the referendum, told The Huffington Post. "They’re struggling. And those are the people we need to hear from. That’s the system that we propose to fix.”
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments