"Alito disagreed with court decisions on reapportionment"

The Boston Globe offers this report.

New Study of State Public Financing Laws

The following announcement arrived via e-mail from the Center for Governmental Studies:

In the last two years, residents witnessed campaign finance scandals in Connecticut and Tennessee along with record-breaking fundraising campaigns in the New Jersey gubernatorial elections, New York City’s mayoral election and California’s ballot measure battles. These events have re-opened the debate about public financing as a good government solution to common campaign finance problems.

To help assess the current state of public financing, the Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) has just released a series of charts outlining the laws of twenty-four states that have public financing on their books as part of their series, Public Financing in American Elections. CGS is a noted authority on public financing laws and has analyzed the effectiveness of numerous programs in multiple jurisdictions including New York City and Los Angeles in a multi-year comparative research project.

These charts describe the key features of various types of public financing programs. There are two main categories of public financing: full public financing (“clean money”), which provides all of the costs necessary to run a campaign, and partial public financing, which only covers some campaign costs. Of the twenty-four states, Arizona and Maine are the only ones that offer full public financing programs for candidates for all state public offices. New Mexico and North Carolina provide full public financing for some public offices and New Jersey recently adopted a full public financing pilot program for two of its legislative districts.

Most states provide public financing in the form of tax incentives to individuals who want to contribute to a particular political party or to qualifying candidates. For instance, the State of Minnesota refunds up to $50 to individuals who contribute to political parties or state office candidates agreeing to spending limits. Arkansas, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia offer tax credits for contributions made to candidates for public office.

States use a variety of mechanisms to fund their public financing programs. Some rely solely on direct appropriations from the general fund while others provide funding through dedicated sources – usually by imposing fines on unpopular citizens or unfavorable activities. Examples of dedicated sources include administrative and civil penalties paid by people who violate campaign finance or ethics laws and surcharges on civil and criminal fines. Most states employ a combination of these mechanisms to fund their programs. The earlier CGS report, Public Financing of Elections: Where to Get the Money, discusses more than 40 possible approaches to funding sources.

The State Public Financing Charts provide the following detailed information about each program:

* How funds are allocated (including maximum amounts allowed)
* Qualifying thresholds
* Residency requirements for matchable contributions
* Funding mechanisms
* Spending limits (as well as spending limits per resident)
* Contribution limits (including candidate personal contribution limits)
* High spending opponent and independent expenditure trigger provisions
* Debate requirement

In addition to the reports mentioned above, CGS published a public financing primer, Investing in Democracy: Creating Public Financing of Elections in Your Community, local public financing charts, and reports on San Francisco, Tucson and Suffolk County (NY). The reports provide a detailed examination of the strengths and weaknesses of public financing laws in practice, with suggestions for improvements, modifications and reform. These reports, as well as the state public financing charts, are available from CGS or can be downloaded from the CGS website, www.cgs.org.

Funding for this report was made possible by a generous grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The views in the study do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Carnegie Corporation and it does not take responsibility for any of the statements or views in the report.

For more information about the series or this chart, please contact Steve Levin, Political Reform Project Manager at (310)470-6590, ext. 115.

"High Court May Review Judicial Elections"

The National Law Journal offers this report. In even more chilling news, the Sacramento Bee offers Bid to punish judges has eye on state, which begins: "An initiative providing for the ouster and criminal indictment of judges who make bad decisions appears headed for a test vote in South Dakota next year and, if it succeeds there, will be attempted in other states, sponsors of the measure said this week."

"McPherson to Seek Reelection to State Post"

The LA Times offers this report. And in an election-related editorial, the newspaper offers A Better Direct Democracy.

"New Orleans Vote Near, but Who Will Go?"

The New York Times offers this report.

-- 
Rick Hasen 
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School 
919 Albany Street 
Los Angeles, CA  90015-1211 
(213)736-1466 - voice 
(213)380-3769 - fax 
rick.hasen@lls.edu 
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html 
http://electionlawblog.org