Democracy Matters: Coercion Without a Cause

The wealthy have dominated American political life since the nation’s founding. It is ironic that the directors of the greatest revolution “for the People” in world history were not “of the People” themselves. The Founding Fathers were on the most part radical, courageous, daring, and comfortably wealthy. At first political rights were granted only to landed white men, but thankfully spread to all citizens over time through many trials and tribulations. However, the main leaders in government remained and still remain the upper class. Populist discontent over this disparity between the governing and the governed has always existed, and has even gained political ground in recent years. The Democracy Matters campaign at Brown is part of this movement. At first sight this campaign’s objective is to restore political rights to “the people.” Upon closer inspection the campaign is a thinly veiled charade to restore political rights to “the people we like.”
Democracy Matters highlights a perceived societal ill to form a base for their movement, and then from there suggests a solution to the problem. Their perceived ill is the notion that private money from wealthy donors and special interests in industry, etc. unduly robs the less fortunate of their due political influence and has put the brakes on real change in this country. According to cleanelectionsri.org, “For years, the role of money in politics has systematically disenfranchised women and minorities while serving as a roadblock to environmental and social change.” To remedy this, members advocate a voluntary public financing program that would allow less wealthy candidates for election to use public campaign funds if they wish, but they must stick with the system throughout the campaign. Privately funded candidates are supposedly free to continue with their own campaigns, however they are often subject to additional restrictions such as contribution limits, etc. The regulations become complex, so to simplify I will only analyze the solution provided by the group in its base form, which is an opt-in public financing system that purportedly does not tread on First Amendment rights unlike other campaign financing schemes.

Public financing of elections is an ineffective and nonsensical method for removing the “corrupting” influence of money on politics. A look at the results of such “clean elections” legislation shows that clean elections laws have failed to change legislator behavior. Ideology matters more than quid-pro-quo arrangements when special interest contributions are made and while clean elections supporters claim to have the people’s interests in mind, they are in reality a special interest themselves.

Arizona, which passed a clean elections bill in 1998, is trumpeted by Democracy Matters as a success story in electing candidates untainted by special interests. Supporters laud the fact that, according to a study done by the Goldwater Institute (a think tank which concentrates on Arizona issues), after being in effect for one election cycle, the bill had already allowed for twenty three percent of all candidates to run “clean”. But have these newly elected Arizona legislators voted differently than their privately funded counterparts? The answer is no. According to the same Goldwater Institute study, once you control for ideology, clean elections candidates show virtually no difference in their voting patterns. Whether elected “clean” or not, a liberal legislator voted for legislation backed by Planned Parenthood, and a conservative legislator voted with the NRA. Assuming that the Democracy Matters crowd believes special favors run rampant within both parties (looking at who backs them, a tenuous assumption at best), these findings crush the idea that public financing will somehow change how legislators act.