Local Control of Clean Elections

David Sirota wrote this post about local control of clean elections for Congressional races. Sirota writes...

In 2001, Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) offered legislation to simply allow states to create voluntary public financing systems for their congressional elections. This legislation cost no federal money at all, nor did it create an unfunded federal mandate: it was simply a "local control" issue. If a state is sick and tired of its congressional delegation whoring for special interests instead of the state’s constituents, the Wellstone legislation said that the state’s legislature could set up a public financing system for its federal elections. States that are happy with their legislators being bought and paid for by special interests are allowed to continue in the current pay-to-play system. It’s the state’s choice. That’s about as "local control" as you get.

Unfortunately, the bill was voted down, with just 36 Democrats supporting it. But six short years later, 27 Democrats who voted for this legislation remain in Congress, a number of Republican Senators who voted against this legislation have been replaced by Democrats (Tester, Webb, Casey, Brown, Obama, etc.), and at least some Republicans still in the Senate have voiced their support for the concept of public financing of elections. Translation: this proposal really could pass with a little push.

Clearly, a full federally funded public financing system is ideal, but the state option would be a pretty great step too, and actually would offer more in the way of organizing potential for the progressive movement.

This is just one of those ideas that just makes sense and might just work. Local control is at the heart of a representitive democracy and having the people in the states decide who they want to fund their representives should appeal to people on both sides.