This year, the Senate
took up the issue of campaign finance for the fourth time since 2007, but it
has again been pushed aside. The legislation that would make campaign finance
more transparent, called S.20, will not be addressed again for at least another
year thanks to it being turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee after the
Vermont Senate voted 19-9. The legislation would have
put into place new limits on campaign contribution “for lawmakers and
candidates for statewide office and created new disclosure standards for
political contributors.” What actually created the doubt and eventually sent
the legislation to the committee was the amendment that would have banned
politicians from directly taking money from corporations. This bill did not
emerge until April 2012, but was actually passed out of committee a year ago.
Now we are set back at least another year. S.20 would have clarified state law as a result of a 2006 U.S.
Supreme Court decision that brought down Vermont’s 1997 Vermont campaign
finance law. Supporters of
reforms in the Senate said “the existing system is an incumbent insurance
policy and too much money is spent on elections”; those who
opposed the bill said Vermont has fair and “clean” elections and that changing the
system is unnecessary. This article provides the stated positions of various
members of the Senate, and provides a clear illustration of the amount of money
involved in donations to campaigns.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Relevant Organizations: Brennan Center for Justice
Brennan Center
for Justice
The Brennan Center for
Justice at New York University School of Law is a non-partisan public policy
and law
institute that focuses on the fundamental issues of democracy and
justice. Our work ranges from voting
rights to campaign finance reform, from
racial justice in criminal law to Constitutional protection in the fight
against terrorism. A singular institution – part think tank, part public
interest law firm, part advocacy group – the
Brennan Center combines
scholarship, legislative and legal advocacy, and communications to
win
meaningful, measurable change in the public sector.
Relevant Orginizations: League of Women Voters
League of Women
Voters
The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political
organization, encourages informed and active participation in government, works
to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public
policy through education and advocacy.
Informative article: Money Talks
According
to history, modern American campaign-finance reform began with tight rules. It
began in the Progressive Era, with the Tillman Act of 1907 prohibiting direct
financial contributions to political candidates from corporations. However, in
the late 1970s, congress began “relaxing the rules”. Most recently, in 2011, eight
of the current Supreme Court Justices questioned lawyers in an oral argument
over an Arizona law known as the Citizens Clean Elections Act, a law that aims
at regulating candidates that have a lot more money than others. This law states
that the candidates that have a great deal less money should be given financial
aid from state funding. However, it seemed that the argument was going to deem
the law unconstitutional. During the debate, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, a long
time advocate for reforming these laws, made an unorthodox comment about the
Court’s handling of them. “It is better to say it’s all illegal than to subject
these things to death by a thousand cuts, because we don’t know what will
happen when we start tinkering with one provision rather than another,” he
said.
What is
interesting is that the Court asserted for the first time during this argument
that an individual’s choice to spend money in support of a political cause was protected
by the First Amendment. This means it is putting the issue up next to
delivering a speech or holding up a sign in protest. It is this metaphor—that
money is speech—that is driving the current Court’s rebellion in
campaign-finance law. This article goes into depth about the Court’s opinion on
where these laws stand with our current election, and what the opposing side
has to say as well. Whether or not the Arizona law is unconstitutional, it is
clear that the problem of campaign-finance reform is a hot topic.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Informative article: Friends Of Democracy, PAC-Super PAC Hybrid, Launched To Go After Other Super PACs
The article below
discusses an effort to put a harsh
spotlight on the coercive effect super PACs are having on the political
process, Ilyse Hogue, a former top official at MoveOn and Media Matters, and
David Donnelly, the Executive Director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, will
file paperwork with the FEC on Monday to formally create an entity called
Friends of Democracy. Friends of
Democracy will aim to demonstrate the need for campaign finance reform by using
its limited resources to shame the biggest donors and their recipients. The
hybrid PAC will have more operational flexibility than a traditional PAC
established as an arm of existing campaign finance non-profit.
Relevant Organizations: Federal Election Commission
Federal Election
Commission
The
duties of the FEC, which is an independent regulatory agency, are to disclose
campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the
limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of
Presidential elections.
Relevant Organizations: Democracy Matters
Democracy
Matters
Democracy
Matters, a non-partisan campus-based national student organization in
partnership with Common Cause, works to get big private money out of politics
and people back in.
Video: Stephen Colbert “God Bless Citizens United” Part One - Five
The videos below are a series that pay homage to comedian
Stephen Colbert and his ability to shed light on U.S. campaign finance
problems post Citizens United ruling.
Informative Article: “Stephen Colbert’s PAC Parody Explains Campaign Finance to America (Part 1)” By Paul Blumenthal and Dan Froomkin
The article below looks at a
series of videos done by Stephen Colbert on his show The Colbert Report about Super PACs. The article looks at how
Colbert explains campaign finance legislation so that the general public can
understand it and the problems. Colbert is achieving this through setting up
his own PAC and documenting his journey of setting up a PAC and receiving
contributions. Colbert’s founding of a super PAC has revealed many of the
problems surrounding campaign finance, including “the influence of PACs and
unlimited-donation super PACs, secret contributions by big donors, the failure
of regulators, and the coordination between campaigns and supposedly
independent groups.” The article points out that “forming a PAC can be as easy
as filling out a form and asking for money.
Informative Article: “How Super PACs are influencing elections” By Richard S. Dunham
The article below gives the
example of how Super PACs are influencing elections by looking at the PAC
Campaign for Primary Accountability, started by Texan Leo Linbeck III. The
article states that “In the early months of the 2012 campaign, spending by
Super PACs dwarfed the amount spent by candidates and traditional political
parties.” Super PACs have been key in this year’s Republican primaries. The
article claims that Super PACs have “effectively eliminat[ed] contribution
limits created by Congress after the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.” The
creator of the Campaign for Primary Accountability states, “because some of the
biggest groups are taking advantage of a loophole in the law that allows for
contributions to be made undisclosed, it has created a sense that shadowy
forces are going to dominate American politics.” The article points out the
problems associated with Super PACs and their reporting of finances, along with
the need for more unaffiliated
Super PACS.
What is Campreform?
Campreform is a group of students who aim to inform people about Campaign Finance Reform through a Public Awareness Campaign and hope to persuade them to advocate this legislation to their congressional representatives. While there are other websites on the issue of Campaign Finance Reform, none of them make the issue clear and simple to a person who knows nothing about the issue. Our purpose is to define the issue clearly and explain the need for Campaign Finance Reform to people who may know nothing about it. With this year’s presidential election, Campaign Finance Reform is a forefront issue. This election has brought out a new issue in CFR in the form of Super PACS. While many people have heard of super PACS, many people do not truly understand the issue. Our site will explain Super PACS and the impact that they have on elections.
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