Cleaner elections

In less litigious times, the complaints brought by the Maine Civil Liberties Union against Maine’s Clean Elections law might have been settled outside of court. The practical problems raised with the reform are serious, but most of them can be solved without abolishing the law.

For instance, MCLU and others argue that the law violates the First Amendment because it limits individual contributions to no more than $500 for gubernatorial candidates and $250 for legislative candidates. The current system allows contributions of up to $1,000. Considering the costs of the race for governor and the amount of money publicly financed candidates would receive, the MCLU is correct that $500 is too low. It should be pushed back up to $1,000. The level of potential corruption of a candidate is not increased between the lower and upper figures, but the ability to run a legitimate campaign could be seriously affected.

Another example, independent expenditures by non-candidates — which a candidate cannot control — are counted against candidates who choose not to participate in the public funding, but they are not counted against those who do. The problem is straightforward — either count the independent expenditures against both or neither, just as long as it is consistent.

A problem of races with more than one non-participating candidate is harder. In a three-way race when a non-participating candidate spends a lot of money, which would then be matched with state funds for the Clean Elections candidate, the third candidate in effect has Maine taxpayers working against him or her. This should be of particular concern for smaller third parties.

The MCLU points to other difficulties with the law, which, the group concludes, add up to this: “The practical effect of this system is to coerce participation in the public financing scheme, as well as to penalize and chill the First Amendment right of those who choose not to participate or who cannot meet the criteria for participation.”

Given the Supreme Court’s view of mandatory campaign finance reform, it never was the intention of the Clean Elections law to make the system coercive. The intent always was to get at problems associated even with Maine’s relatively low-key races: rising costs of campaigns, fewer and fewer people who can afford to be candidates, increased influence of the people holding the purse strings.

Eliminating these barriers to public participation in politics is a worthy goal, even if the Clean Elections law isn’t perfect. Given the current state of affairs with campaign fund-raising, it isn’t as if the Clean Elections law is going to make things worse.