It’s Time to Make Elections Fair, and San Diego Can Lead the Way with Democracy Dollars
The time-honored paean of American Democracy, the vote of the people, has become more like a sad song. Computer crafted voting districts, corporations recognized as people, and racism-fueled claims of fraud have all weakened the most basic franchise afforded people fortunate enough to be recognized as citizens.
None of these ploys are new. Thanks to technology, the scale at which they are deployed is unparalleled. The aim, as always, is to tamp down challenges to the status quo.
In San Diego, activists are putting the finishing touches on a proposal pushing back against the current wave of electoral cynicism by enabling broader participation in the process where it counts the mo$t.
Indulge me for a few paragraphs here as I set the scene before explaining how the concept of Democracy Dollars would change the local political landscape.
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California is among the states seeking to expand the voting population and is regularly scorned by reactionaries, including the President, with easily disproved claims about voter fraud.
In fact, the only known case of election fraud from the last election was by a GOP campaign in North Carolina--and Republicans are trying to blame the make up election on Democrats.
An Associated Press analysis found Republican gerrymandering was responsible for preventing Democrats from picking up an additional 16 in the House of Representatives and flipping up to 7 state house chambers in the 2018 elections..
The Trump 2020 re-election effort has quietly spent nearly twice as much as the entire Democratic field combined on Facebook and Google ads. A dozen-plus super PACs and “social welfare” nonprofits are spending huge amounts of money selling the administration’s agenda and priming the public for the next election.
Although a super majority of voters in Florida approved a constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to former felons who’ve completed their sentences in November, the Republican legislature is expected to approve rules effectively disenfranchising 1,112,300 people.
A recent report from the Center for American Progress says widespread voter suppression – particularly against historically marginalized groups – is a recurring problem in the United States. Registration purges, selective enforcement of voter ID laws, and eliminating polling stations all not-so-mysteriously target voters who are non-white.
The For The People Act (HR1), the first piece of legislation introduced in January by House Democrats is a 571-page compendium of existing problems and proposed solutions concerning voting, political money, redistricting and ethics.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who apparently thinks it’s not fair to Republicans if more Americans are able to cast ballots, has labeled the bill a radical, half-baked socialist proposal. Needless to say, it will never see the light of day in the Senate.
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More than two dozen states, counties, and cities have some form of public financing for elections, some dating back more than four decades. While these programs vary in design and scope, they are an effective equalizer to the out sized influence big dollar donors have on elected officials.
By providing limited funds to help finance the campaigns of candidates who demonstrate popular support, these programs can amplify the voices of local constituents by providing an incentive to reach out for small contributions.
Localities with public financing systems have seen increased diversity both in the donor base and the gender, racial, and class makeup of candidate pools.
And here’s the real kicker: elected officials who qualify for public financing spend less time fundraising and more time doing what they were elected to do.
For example, the standard communicated to newly elected members of the House of Representatives is that they’re supposed to spend 40% or more of their time on the phone with donors raising money.
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San Diego’s Voters Voice Initiative organizers are seeking to promote a voter initiated initiative for a system in City of San Diego elections similar to the one now in place in Seattle, Washington.
Here’s what happened in the first time it was used Seattle, via CampaignLegal.org:
...Win/Win and Every Voice’s post-election report also documented how successful the program was in bringing new donors in to the process. Specifically, it noted that only 8,200 Seattle residents contributed to campaigns in 2013. With Democracy Vouchers, however, the number of contributors jumped to 25,000, a three-fold increase.
And more than 80 percent of those 25,000 were new donors who hadn’t donated in 2015 or 2013.
The 2017 donor base was more diverse than past elections in other ways too. In 2017, higher proportions of donors were female, came from neighborhoods with below-city-median household incomes, came from areas with higher levels of racial diversity, and were younger. The voucher program creates a strong incentive for candidates to engage with a broader representation of the population and the 2017 election demonstrated that this incentive worked.
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The Voters' Voice Coalition is a partnership between members of the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, Independent Voter Project, and Represent.us. They’ve spent the last year examining public financing policies used nationwide to understand why they succeeded or failed and hold thy might work in San Diego.
Most of what’s below is ripped from the website at sdvotersvoice.org, and I encourage readers to to visit the site’s FAQ page for more details.
The three goals for this effort are:
Limit Special Interest Money by engaging more citizen participation in the democratic process by making it possible for every voter to be a campaign donor.
Enable qualified candidates who lack the wealth or support of big donors to compete for municipal office.
Making it easy for voters to understand campaigns by establishing an up-to-date City of San Diego website with easily accessed electoral information, campaign contributions and expenditures in real time.
San Diego's Voters' Voice believes their initiative will level the playing field and give every eligible voter the opportunity to join the donor class. The vehicle for this transformation is what they call Democracy Dollars.
How it Works
1. Provide every registered voter in the City of San Diego four $25 Democracy Dollars Certificates in the mail.
2. To qualify Candidates must showing grass roots support by
collecting a minimum of qualified signatures and contributions
For Mayor $10 from 600 eligible voters.
For Candidates for City Attorney and City Council signatures a $10 from at least 200 eligible voter.
agreeing to new voluntary contribution limits ($500 for Mayor and $250 for City Attorney or City Council),
participating in cablecast and live stream debates.
3. Voters assign Democracy Dollars to Candidates.
4. A Democracy Fund Administrator verifies signatures and gives each campaign their Democracy Dollars.
5. Public reports on the City’s Public Access Portal shall provide transparency for the Democracy Dollars and all campaign contributions and expenditures.
6. Participating candidates can use a logomark, a symbol signifying that they are participating candidate, on printed literature and television media and the logomark would be prominently displayed by the candidate’s name on the ballot.
Can this happen in San Diego? Maybe.
There’s more work to be done, and final tweaks to be made. The question of how to pay for public financing (It would cost approx. one third of one percent of the City’s annual budget) hasn’t been settled on, though I like to point out that the potential to prevent (or make politicians accountable for) stupid financial decisions would probably make this a money maker.
The opposition to any such plan will be HUGE. Most politically ambitious elected officials and all the usual suspects when it comes to backroom dealing at city hall will find a reason to hate it.
San Diego’s Voters Voice Initiative will be hosting their first public meeting on Saturday, March 23 @10:30am at the Mira Mesa Library, 8405 New Salem Street (zip 92126).
You can reach them at sdvotersvoice@gmail.com.
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