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.
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