Why is national security a money in politics issue? Did the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision really allow for more speech by more people in the political process? What, exactly, are states doing to tackle campaign finance issues in their local elections? These are just a few of the topics on today’s C-SPAN Washington Journal which spent three hours talking
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We’ve spent lots of time here at Issue One urging all the presidential candidates to speak more about solutions to money in politics if they want to prove their reformer bona fides. This is more true than ever today, with Center for Public Integrity publishing an in-depth look about Secretary Hillary Clinton’s close ties to a universe of super PACs
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Issue One advisory board member Alan Solomont is out with an op-ed in Roll Call with a simple call to action: to get millennial participation in politics up, we’ve got to reduce the influence of money in politics. The op-ed marks the second anniversary of a little-known Supreme Court case called McCutcheon vs. FEC, which eliminated caps on the total amount
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Today’s reminder that reform isn’t just about winning an election! Tallahassee, Florida, where a Tea Party/progressive grassroots alliance passed strong new ethics rules and citizen-funding of elections, is officially turning on the engine of their new system. The 2014 ballot initiative was backed by 67 percent of voters, and is proof that the push for a stronger democracy transcends party lines. Back
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File this one under “Obvious, Captain.”: Missourians overwhelmingly support tougher ethics laws for public officials, according to a new poll. Ethics rules are some of the least discussed (but most critical) aspects of a strong, robust campaign finance system. When elected officials are truly beholden to the people they represent instead of special interests who may try to influence our
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Among the many solutions that could be enacted today without a constitutional amendment, perhaps one of the most important is an overhaul of the notoriously dysfunctional Federal Election Commission. Charged with enforcing existing campaign finance rules, this agency is so gridlocked by partisan politics that commissioners not only have failed to prevent super PACs and other outside spenders from dominating
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Yesterday, President Obama traveled to Illinois to deliver a speech on the “better politics” he described last month in his final State of the Union. The main thrust? In order to reach our full potential as a nation, we must first address our broken political system, including dark money in elections. We’ve got to build a better politics. One that’s
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In one of the most exciting moments of the entire 2016 campaign, Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders made the case for why money in politics reform is issue one. Yet they continue to focus on the wrong aspects of our broken system: Citizens United. Both candidates have spent months on the campaign trail explaining the insidious connections between
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Today, former Senators J. Bennett Johnson and Bill Brock, members of our ReFormers Caucus, penned an editorial for The Hill, addressing the disastrous ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, which turns 40 this week. Buckley v. Valeo struck down previously imposed limits on campaign spending, opening a floodgate of donations into the electoral process while dramatically altering the manner in which
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On the sixth anniversary of the disastrous Citizens United decision, it’s clearer now more than ever that momentum is on the side of reformers. That was the conclusion of Thursday’s Solutions Summit at the Brookings Institution, where an exciting and diverse group gathered to discuss the crisis in our democracy and how to reduce money’s influence on our politics. Participants
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