Connecticut has offered a voluntary public financing system for state-wide constitutional and General Assembly offices since 2008. Through financing from the Citizens' Election Fund, candidates that obtain the required number of small donations can receive a lump sum to fund their campaign. The program is very popular and in 2012, 77 percent of successful candidates were publicly financed.
On March 15, 2013, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held hearings on the London Whale scandal. The indomitable and indefatigable Chairman Carl Levin, ably supported by the brilliant committee chief of staff, Elise Bean, took on six JP Morgan Chase (“JPMC”) current and former executives for four hours and three regulators for two, with support from other Committee members.
The extent of the money in politics problem, how we got here (from a legal perspective), and what we can do to create a democracy in which the strength of a citizen’s voice does not depend on the size of her wallet.
In 2012, just 61 large donors to Super PACs giving an average of $4.7 million each matched the $285.2 million in grassroots contributions from more than 1,425,500 small donors to the major party presidential candidates.
Outside spending organizations reported $1.11 billion in spending to the FEC through the final reporting deadline in the 2012 cycle. That’s already a 200% increase over total 2008 outside spending.
Every year, millions of eligible voters fall through the cracks of our antiquated voter registration system because they have moved sometime in the last year.
The Massachusetts lawsuit alleges that the Commonwealth failed to provide required voter registration services at public assistance offices, a violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
According to all available data, the voter participation rate of the first Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, is among the lowest of any ethnic group in the country. There are complex historical and cultural reasons that make the issue of voting among American Indians and Alaska Natives unique.
The report is timed to the two-day federal trial that starts tomorrow morning that will redraw Kansas’ legislative districts. If the Court were to adopt the House’s proposed map, Kansas would end up with a dubious distinction: having the nation’s most extreme instance of prison-based gerrymandering in a state legislative district.