Removing unnecessary hurdles to small donor participation will help fix a system that currently prioritizes wealthy, white, male donors over communities of color and working-class people.
Policymakers in Michigan have continuously made attending college harder through divestment in Michigan’s public higher education system, resulting in skyrocketing college prices.
Congress must address how Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people confront both the worst health outcomes and the greatest threats to household financial stability as a result of the pandemic.
Challenging the new process for conducting Ohio’s primary election as one that will deprive Ohioans of their fundamental right to vote and the failure of the state to allow voters to register up to 30 days prior to the election as a violation of the National Voter Registration Act.
The three sets of steps policymakers and election officials must take to ensure that Black and brown Americans—and all Americans—can exercise their fundamental right to vote in 2020 and beyond.
Supporting Seattle's voter-approved Democracy Voucher Program — a system designed to empower small donors and the candidates they support in city elections.
Public financing of elections, as a state and local democracy reform, can help enhance the political voice and power of working-class people and people of color. It is an effective antidote to the outsized influence corporations and major donors currently have on both politics and policy.
After getting the First Amendment supremely wrong in Citizens United, the Supreme Court now faces its next money in politics case. In McCutcheon v. FEC, the challengers are attacking a law that says that no one person can contribute over $123,000 directly to federal candidates, parties, and committees—that’s over twice the average American’s income.
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.
