Get Herald RSSIn the United States, a much-heard frustration among the politically active is that despite the widely ranging views of the public and politicians, voters are invariably left with a choice between two centrist parties: the Republicans and the Democrats.
This is due largely to two factors.
First, the Democratic and Republican parties have the long-standing precedent of being the only financially empowered representatives of the left and right. Nearly all the money that spills into political campaigns spills into those parties alone. In turn, such funds allow the two parties to build up their political capital and dig themselves even more securely into their Congressional seats. So their power is maintained, and the convenient policies the two parties choose to brand themselves with remain the voters' only options.
Who are the losers in this vicious cycle? Third parties and politicians that would break from the party line to serve the public interest if they weren't dependent on and locked into a partisan political machine.
Second, even when citizens come up with policies with potential for real social good, ideological inertia overpowers our legislators, who are dependent on campaign money and must perpetually answer to the question, "Who's got the cash?" Corporations, unions, industrial coalitions and agricultural lobbies are happy to pay the price for political influence. Like the two dominant political parties, the power of special-interest groups is cyclical: They finance politicians that support their cause and promote their platform. New ideas never make it onto the stage.
A system that allows for these processes disenfranchises voters whose beliefs do not square with either political party or who are not represented by a powerful lobby. Instead of a dynamic democracy that searches in earnest through a wilderness of policies to find those paths that maximize social welfare, we get a sluggish equilibrium in which special-interest deadlock forms a smokescreen behind which politicians can chase cash from self-serving, economically entrenched institutions that are all too happy to screw over the public.
The solution to this problem is campaign finance reform, that bipartisan item that still manages to be left off so many legislators' platforms. It takes guts to undermine your own power base for the sake of an unrepresented constituency, which may be why the task falls on the shoulders of such iconoclastic celebrity-politicians as Russ Feingold and John McCain on the national level. But on a state and local level, the weight lands in our own laps.
Fortunately, a particular form of public campaign financing called Clean Elections is spreading across the United States. Already passed in Arizona, Vermont, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Maine, the movement has reached Rhode Island's legislature.
The Clean Elections bill Rhode Island is considering would grant grassroots candidates that can collect a qualifying number of signatures and small $5 "seed" donations a fixed amount of money for their primary and general election campaigns - provided that they agree to raise no further funds. In this way, the Clean Elections system is distinguished from other campaign finance reform initiatives, such as the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act. While BCRA tried to reduce corruption by regulating private campaign contributions, the most recent presidential election demonstrates the failure of such measures. Clean Elections creates an alternative where candidates can opt out of receiving private campaign contributions all together. Furthermore, participation is voluntary, dodging the bullets of campaign finance reform critics who claim that private campaign contributions ought to be protected as a form of free speech.
If Clean Elections candidates are outspent by privately funded candidates, the amount of public campaign funding they are awarded is increased to keep them on a level playing field. This provides a disincentive for those who try to simply buy their victory: Under Clean Elections, a candidate's best choice is to turn to public financing. The result is a competition between financial equals that is won on merit, not money.
The ability of moneyed interest groups to influence politics has stood as an embarrassment to the democratic ideal since our country's inception. Moreover, it stands as an undue obstacle to innumerable causes that deserve public consideration. Any organization that is taking action against the status quo and any individual who believes in a democracy with integrity should throw their support behind Clean Elections reform. Because until publicly-funded campaigns can level the political playing field, advocates for change will be fighting a steep uphill battle.
If you want to find out more about Clean Elections, check out www.cleanelectionsri.org and come to the Hourglass in Faunce House tonight at 9 p.m. for a performance by hip-hop artists from Broad St. Studio, followed by word! poets and Andrew Fox '06.
Sebastian Benthall '07 is a member of Democracy Matters and is a strong proponent of several political positions that nobody's heard of.
