The For the People Act can begin to address the longstanding racist exclusions in our democracy with policy solutions that are proven to advance racial equity.
Until voters and elected leaders in Baltimore, Maryland took action to bring small donor public financing to their elections, big money in politics was a growing problem in the city.
"Although credit scores never formally take race into account, they draw on data about personal borrowing and payment history that is shaped by generations of discriminatory public policies and corporate practices that limit access to wealth for Black and Latinx families."
Policy choices have allowed big companies to continuously use their power to preserve economic and democratic imbalances that maintain their wealth and influence at the expense of everyone else.
The Government By the People Act increases the power of the small contributions that ordinary citizens can afford to give, providing incentives for congressional candidates to reach out to average constituents, not just dial for dollars from wealthy donors.
In 2016, a report from the progressive think tank Demosfound that most campaign dollars in local elections were coming from contributors who are white, male and high-income.
With only the wealthy funding and communicating with the campaigns of elected officials, politicians are incentivized to make policy decisions that align with their donors’ interests, not those of their broader constituency. But the elite donor class holds views that don’t align with the general public’s, as a 2016 Demos study detailed.
Studies have shown that policy most reflects the preferences of the most wealthy members of society and that those preferences do not reflect the greater public opinion on issues including the economy.
For several years, Demos and our partners have been working to fulfill our Constitution’s democratic promise by forging a new legal order that is open to money-in-politics reforms, and marshalling the factual and legal arguments that could help the Court move in this direction.
There are specific reforms that could help black families. Standardizing same-day voter registration across states would benefit communities of color, which face disproportionate barriers to civic participation.
The D.C. Council unanimously backed publicly financed campaigns Tuesday, a move lauded by clean-government advocates in a city long plagued by its association with a pay-to-play culture.[...]
Simply put, black families in the District overall have less wealth and income than white families — and therefore have less ability to give to political candidates. This helps explain why black D.C. residents are underrepresented year after year in political donations.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has signed a law that will create publicly financed elections, reversing her previous opposition to a plan that advocates say will help curb money’s influence in District politics.
Bowser announced that she was throwing her support behind the Fair Elections Act, which was approved unanimously by the D.C. Council in February. The law, which will first affect elections in 2020, will steer millions annually toward the campaigns of local candidates and is aimed at reducing their reliance on deep-pocketed donors. [...]
While no law prevents outside donors, for example, from investing in the campaign of a low-income person, the likelihood that they’ll do so is low. The problem is social capital: Low-income people lack it, and so their personal networks do not often contain millionaires with open pocketbooks.
Chiraag Bains, Director of Legal Strategies for Demos
“Do you believe that the Constitution requires that we allow corporations and wealthy individuals the unfettered ability to translate their economic might into political power through campaign contributions and expenditures—even if it drowns out the voices of working-class Americans and erects barriers to candidates of color who lack access to big money and the mostly white donor class?”
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has made it even more difficult for minorities to affect politics with money, said Adam Lioz, political director for the left-leaning advocacy group Demos.