Don’t Let Party Hacks Hijack Election Reform

So let me get this straight, the best recommendation thus far is to increase taxpayer spending on elections by a ration of 8 to 1? We need less money in politics, not more. Why even consider more public funds when we can barely keep the subways in working order. Money is not the answer here. We need real structure reform from the top down otherwise all of these state and local tweaks are just rearrangements of the deck chairs on the Titanic. The article never mentions SCOTUS Citizens United and how any of these proposals would work in conjunction with this ruling. As it stands now with this 8 to 1 public funding proposal, the public would have to match unlimited dark money from corporations and unions.

The Times had the opportunity to inform readers and voters about the successful campaign finance program implemented in Seattle. Seattle's voucher program is the most progressive campaign finance program in the nation. Incumbents are not provided any advantages afforded by the existing New York City campaign finance program- a program that doesn't take the "fat cat" contributors out of the fundraising equation. What's also fascinating is the racial make-up of the big contributors- they're predominantly white. Yes, the current campaign fundraising system is segregated along racial lines when it comes to the big contributors in New York City campaigns. Don't expect any campaign finance program modeled on New York City's to result in a less segregated playing field. The elite class of predominantly white fundraisers will continue to rule the day. Seattle's voucher program is the only public campaign finance system that not only levels the playing field by reducing the power of these fat cat oligarchs but also to desegregate a process where nearly all of big money contributors are white. Unfortunately, the only real progressive campaign finance program isn't even on the table. Why is that?

It's long past time for complete public funding of elections, with no organizational funding--be it union, corporate, religious, or five-oh-whatever allowed--and a very low three digit limit on individual contributions per campaign. Now, of course, this needs to be done on all levels--Federal, State, local. But given the present political realities, this is not likely to happen on the national level (we desperately need to recant the Citizen's United fiasco). So, can we at least try to make a go of it here in supposedly progressive New York without all the special interests nipping little chunks out of the corpus?

Thank you NY Times for holding our governors hand to the fire on this. He always talks a great game about reform, but doesn't have a very good history of follow-up. Please keep the light shining on this. We need to show the country what a Dem dominated government is capable of.

Much needs to be done to make elections fair. The most important is the way financing is done. In Europe financing from corporations is considered corruption. In the US, the most urgent reform is to take the responsibility for elections away from the Secretary of State who is elected on a partisan ballot.

My issue: "Public financing works" - b/c while in theory it could, in reality, b/c of the SCOTUS rulings in Citizens United v. FEC & Bucklyr v. Valeo, Super PACs can & will skew funding where funding interests need something.

Tax dollars should never be used to promote a political campaign.

Just goes to show New York Democrats aren't especially democratic. Forget public finance. Gathering signatures is a shadow game in politics. I know. I spent months researching the topic last election cycle. In principle, FEC law grants most candidates the ability to petition onto a ballot through signature collection. The idea sounds very democratic. In practice, not so much. Even at the lower 50,000 signature threshold, collecting signatures requires an entire political apparatus. You need to file paper work, print binders, develop an inventory system, confirm voters, hire staff, train volunteers, actually collect the signatures, and then audit everything yourself before submitting the documents to a county clerk's office. Otherwise, there's no internal record of what you physically submitted. Naturally, this all costs money. Lots of money. To make matters worse, legislatures generally include a unique constraint on signature collection. Meaning: One voter, one signature. If a duplicate signature is collected, the earlier date takes precedence. Incumbents will often run signature collection drives, knowing they already have a spot on the ballot, in order to eliminate the pool of potential signatures to a level below what will get any third party candidate on the ballot. If the incumbent spends money to collect all the signatures first, no one else can collect them. These are only some of the dirty practices too. I could go on.

Yes, I can see how Governor Cuomo and every other Democratic party hack would like to get rid of the Working Families Party. It has consistently stood up for progressive values and progressive candidates -- thereby forcing wishy-washy Democratic candidates to declare themselves on candidates & issues that they would rather not to be committed to. Seems to me the last time Governor Cuomo ran for office, he created the Working Women's Party. The name sounded like the Working Families Party in name but in fact was composed of Cuomo female toadies and tamely endorsed him. My own name for that party was "the Working Girl's Party." I like to think that my own State Senator, Liz Kreuger and Assemblywoman Rebecca Seawright have enough sense not to favor driving third parties out of existence altogether.

This commission takes its marching orders from Gov. Cuomo. The recommendations it delivers on Dec. 1 will be those the Governor directs the commission to deliver. No independent thoughts or actions are tolerated under this Governor. The Editorial Board should know this by now.