[EL] LATimes: Cash comes too late for debate

[David A. Holtzman]

P.S. This table is in the paper but doesn't seem to be online:



I've heard of proposals for blackout periods 
<http://www.ibabuzz.com/politics/2014/02/21/padilla-touts-blackout-period-for-fundraising/> 
to stop legislators' fundraising during legislative sessions.
But given that voters are the legislators with ballot measures, and that 
unlike elected legislators, voters vote by secret ballot, ballot measure 
committees are different animals.
Does anybody support cut-off dates for fundraising for or against ballot 
measures?

On 3/16/2015 1:09 PM, David A. Holtzman wrote:
>
> One of the interests often advanced as a reason for campaign finance 
> disclosure is voters’ interest in knowing who is for or against 
> something on the ballot.(Never mind the conflict with the norm of 
> having secret ballots.)Disclosure of donations and (so-called) 
> independent spending lets voters connect propositions and candidates 
> with donors and spenders, making voters’ decisions easier if they 
> really like or really don’t like the donors or spenders.
>
> Today’s LATimes (page B2) has an article about late disclosure 
> <http://www.latimes.com/local/cityhall/la-me-analysis-hidden-money-20150316-story.html> 
> as a way of preventing voter backlash.I didn’t see it in today’s [EL] 
> digest, and since disclosure is a topic of great interest here, I’ve 
> linked to it in the sentence above.
>
> The article focuses on L.A.’s recent city elections, particularly the 
> campaign for “Charter Amendments 1 and 2, which changed L.A.’s 
> election dates and gave some officials an extra 18 months in 
> office.”It quotes a political consultant saying “it's ‘not normal’ to 
> have such a large volume of contributions during the last 48 hours of 
> the campaign.‘You can't spend that kind of money in that kind of a 
> time frame in any useful way, unless you knew it was coming in.’”
>
> - dah
>
>
> -- 
> David A. Holtzman, M.P.H., J.D.
> david at holtzmanlaw.com
>
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