I was hoping that clammyc's excellent diary today would get more notice, but it is quickly slipping down the Recent Diaries list into nowhereland, hence this post.
In Will any candidate touch election reform?, clammyc addresses one of the most important issues we face--the integrity of our elections in the US--and challenges our Presidential candidates to lead on the subject of voter suppression and campaign finance reform.
Obama has been leading the way on voter suppression issues since November of 2005, having re-introduced the The Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2007 (S 453) in January. The bill currently has 15 co-sponsors (Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Benjamin Cardin, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, Dianne Feinstein, Tim Johnson, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Mary Landrieu, Patrick Leahy, Carl Levin, Claire McCaskill, Chuck Schumer, and Sheldon Whitehouse), and would put strong penalties in place for groups that suppress voter turnout through deception and intimidation.
Apparently, many citizens are not aware of the fact that Senator Obama is, in fact, taking action to fight voter suppression and advocating in favor of public financing of elections. The corporate-owned media have not exactly highlighted his or others' efforts in these areas (surprise, surprise).
Voter suppression issues can and must be addressed prior to the 2008 elections; we all remember what happened in 2000 and 2004, when thousands of (primarily Democratic) voters were disenfranchised, improperly removed from the rolls or intimidated from voting altogether.
Dick Durbin, along with Barack Obama, Russ Feingold and Arlen Specter, has introduced the Fair Elections Now Act (warning, pdf file), whose purpose is to make public campaign financing of our elections a reality. Per Senator Durbin's email announcement regarding his bill:
The "Fair Elections Now Act" would create a fair system of public funding to restore Americans' confidence in our elections process and break the dependency on special interest lobbyists for campaign contributions. There are four major components:
- Seed Money: Allow candidates to raise a limited amount of seed money, capped at $100 per contributor, to get their campaigns up and running
- Qualifying for Public Funds: Candidates must raise a specified number (based on the size of the state) of $5 contributions from residents of their state in order to demonstrate that they are serious, viable candidates
- Allocation of Public Funds: Once a candidate qualifies for public funding, he or she is eligible to receive a minimum of $750,000, plus an additional $150,000 for every Congressional District in the state minus one
- "Fair Fight" Funds: If a candidate is being outspent by independent expenditures or an opponent who has refused public financing, the law would match that spending dollar-for-dollar up to 200 percent of the base allocation
My approach is simple, fair, and would free U.S. Senate candidates from depending on special interests to run their campaigns -- for good.
There is companion legislation pending in the House, as well. Senator Durbin asks those of us who want real campaign finance reform to support him in his efforts by contacting our Congressional representatives and Senators to move forward on this important legislation. You can sign on to help here: Please urge your Members of Congress to support the "Fair Elections Now" legislation--and its companion bill in the House--today!. You can watch co-sponsor Barack Obama speak about this bill at a Town Hall meeting in New Hampshire here.
We all know that the Republican party has little interest in either removing the influence of big money from our electoral system or in preventing abhorrent attempts to disenfranchise large swaths of the electorate from their voting rights. So it is up to us to put pressure on our legislators now to stand up for clean and fair elections.
Senator Obama has been a leader on this issue for many years, having originally introduced The Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act back in November 2005 during the 109th Congress. During his days as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama led many voter registration drives that brought new voters to the polls in huge numbers. His campaign is all about involving people in making our country a better place by becoming more informed and involved citizens (yesterday's Walk for Change, which I was initially planning to write about today, brought thousands of people in all 50 states out in their neighborhoods, talking about the election and what is on the minds of citizens everywhere). It was a great day, and as I walked with a group from my area, I met people who had never before gotten involved in the political process who were truly becoming engaged.
Let's all do everything we can to support initiatives that will make our elections more free and more fair!