Must See Film: Election Day

PBS did the broadcast premier of Election Day, a documentary by Katy Chevigny. I originally saw the film as part of the Stranger Than Fiction series a while back, and it instantly became one of my favorite films of all time.

The film takes an amazing look at our electoral process by observing 11 different stories all shot on Election Day 2004. The good, the bad and the ugly are shown as they happen.

The film covers important aspects regarding registration, voting rights, and ballot verification. It also has very touching scenes, including those covering individuals voting for the first time.

PBS will be streaming the entire film on-line for the month of July, and I can't recommend it strongly enough. Anybody that wants to help organize a screening let me know.

Garrett & Countrywide

Well, with the news breaking about the VIP program at Countrywide, I decided to check out if our Representative Scott Garrett was part of the brewing scandal.

Happily, I can report he is not. He has a small loan from a local bank, and that's it.

Unfortunately, as noted by the Center for Responsive Politics, he has received $5,000 from Countrywide's PAC.

Countrywide's largest competitors in the home loans category are no doubt Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of Garrett's regular targets in his quest to eliminate the government.

It should be interesting to see if the Shulman campaign decides to make an issue of Garrett's opposition to the existence of the two, as well as voting against other housing programs that would benefit our District; while taking contributions from the one company who benefits most from his stances.

This is part of the reason I think public financing is so important. I have little doubt that Garrett really does want to eliminate the government, as he says often. However, due to political contributions it's easy for people to question whether it's motivated by his own beliefs or his campaign coffers.

Clean Elections Off To A Good Start

I've made no secret that I'm a fan of removing special interest influence from elections. When someone like our own Representative Scott Garrett will vote against a bill benefiting Greenwood Lake that he previously voted for twice, apparently because a special interest group with only 40,000 members comes out against it, something is seriously wrong with the process. Nothing like watching our Representative bend our District over a barrel to ensure he gets some campaign donations and expenditures on his behalf.

At the state level, the Clean Elections program seeks to eliminate the Garrett-esque about face by removing corporate and large individual donations from the process. In the first poll released about the program, it seems it's already had a positive impact on voters. Rutgers' Eagleton Institute of Politics and Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind teamed up to review the program.

Here's what they found:

• Twice as many likely voters in the Clean Elections districts had heard quite a lot or some about the Clean Elections legislation compared to the state as a whole
(44% to 22%).
• The same was true regarding awareness of the legislative races in their districts, with 70% of likely voters in the Clean Elections districts saying they had heard quite a lot or some about the races, compared to 37% of likely voters statewide.
• Voters in the Clean Elections districts also reported having received more information than voters in the rest of the state. Eighty-two percent of likely voters in the Clean Elections Districts reported receiving campaign ads in the mail, compared to 49% statewide. Seventy-four percent of likely voters in the Clean
Elections districts said they had gotten information about the legislative races from an article or articles in the newspaper, compared to 56% statewide.

These are tangible results. Something not in the report that is also tangible was voter turnout. It's widely believed turnout earlier this month was the lowest ever for a legislative election, with estimates at 30%. That's a 4% drop in turnout from 2003, the last time the entire legislature was up for re-election, and effectively means 15.01% of the population gets to call the shots.

In the 37th District, where the Republicans did not qualify for the program, the unofficial results show a 5.9% drop in the percentage of registered voters voting for State Senator over 2003's number.

HOWEVER, in the 14th District the drop was .6% (even though 2,775 more people voted), and in the 24th turnout increased 6.1% (nearly 11,000 more voters). While still not great, State Senate voting for the 14th and 24th were 40% and 35% respectively. My hope is that when the turnout numbers are finalized by the state they will publish it by legislative district, in addition to county, since they already estimate voters before the election.

In spite of these gains, what is going to take time is restoring the public faith in our state government. Clean Elections voters polled didn't have significantly more faith in government to do the right thing compared to those outside the clean elections District:

Compared to statewide voters, voters in the Clean Elections districts were just as likely to say they:
• trust the legislature only some or none of the time to do what is right;
• are concerned that campaign money influences legislators after the election;
• are not confident that public financing of campaigns will reduce the influence of large donors in the political process.

Faith in elected officials is earned, not given, and it is incumbent upon our elected leaders to do better. It's a strong statement when only 17% of voters statewide trust the legislature to do the right thing most of the time. Often, as done in the Bergen Freeholder debate by the BCDO candidates, officials protest that they are not crooks and should not be thought of as such. However, if 83% of the public thinks that way; something either within the process or through the actions of those protesting has triggered that opinion.

If the Clean Elections Program, over time, can help restore the public faith in our elected officials it's a good thing. Ultimately, it will be the responsibility of the officials to seal the public confidence deal.

Clean Elections, Federal Style

After reading the NJ Herald's account of how the clean elections program is going in the 24th Legislative District (Steve Oroho, Alison Littell McHose and Gary Chiusano vs. Edwin Selby, Pat Walsh and Toni Zimmer), one has to wonder if anything like it could ever work on the Federal level. Here's how the program works, from the NJ Herald:

To qualify for public financing under the state program, candidates must receive at least 400 contributions of $10 each, or $4,000, in order to get $46,000 in public dollars for a total campaign fund of $50,000. By receiving the maximum 800 $10 contributions, or $8,000, the matching public funds will bring each candidate to $100,000. Contributions must be from registered voters in the legislative district, and candidates must submit weekly reports to the state.

Candidates also are entitled to up to $10,000 in "seed money," which is comprised of donations of $500 or less from individual registered voters in the state, not any organizations.

While proponents of pay-to-play probably cringe at that last part, for the rest of us tired of corruption and the undue influence of special interest dollars in politics it's a breath of fresh air.

It would not be impossible to implement this at the Federal level, and I've outlined the cost, barriers and impact such a program may have on Washington below.

The Numbers

With the Census Bureau estimating New Jersey has 8,724,560 people, each of our 40 legislative districts represents roughly 218,114 people. Assuming each candidate achieves the maximum number of donations, that means each legislative district is paying $552,000, or $2.50 per person.

With each Congressional District representing roughly 703,500 people, if the percentage of required donors relative to population served remained the same (0.366%), each candidate would need to collect roughly 2,600 qualifying donations.

When you compare that to the 837 individual donations (0.119%) received by Representative Scott Garrett and the 811 received (0.115%) by Paul Aronsohn last year, you can see just how few individuals are actually participating in the process. Eliminate out of district donations, and it's even fewer.

The total pot of money using the same sort of formula would need to be $1.78 million, or $890,000 per candidate. That's more than either Garrett or Aronsohn raised from individuals, but less than Garrett had when adding special interest dollars. Realistically, this could and probably would be reduced as that amount exceeds what most campaigns raised and spent on the general election.

In the event it wasn't reduced, the total program cost for clean elections in the House: $775 million, assuming no Independents qualify for the maximum and each main party candidate qualifies for and spends the maximum (unused funds are returned to the Treasury).

In order to do this in the Senate, some minor tweaks would have to be made. The number of qualifying donations could be adjusted to meet each state's individual population so that each candidate would receive the same amount per person represented. For example, last year's campaign for Senate in New Jersey would have given each candidate $11 million, while in Pennsylvania they would have received $15.7 million each.

Due to the fact 1/3 of the Senate is up for reelection every two years, you could tack on another $258 million for those and bring the grand total for the program to slightly over $1 billion dollars per election cycle.

The Barriers

First off, getting politicians and their campaign staff to want to, at a minimum in most cases, triple or quadruple the number of donations from individuals they need to receive is unlikely. For example, Senator Bob Menendez brought in 8,701 individual donations (0.099%) last year; if the funding formula remained the same it would have to go to 32,000. However, with over 1.1 million registered Democrats within the state, a main party campaign should be able to pull it off.

Second, you'll have every special interest group saying their free speech is being limited if they don't get to donate to campaigns during the general election. There are 4,138 PACs who would want to be able to donate, as with NJ's program, they would still be able to donate during the primary and could send out an e-mail to their members living within a political district to send a check to their choice of candidate in the general. Those who want campaign cash to be the greatest influence in politics are unlikely to be happy with this idea. This would likely lead to one heck of a Supreme Court fight.

Third, you'll have the politics as usual power brokers serving within the House and Senate that would fight this plan. They'd come up with any number of reasons, but eliminating their ability to affect a general with that last second $5,000 donation from either their campaign or Leadership PAC, and therefore having a chip once a winning Representative comes to Washington, is a huge strike against this for them. Once again, they could donate toward the primary and see where things fall.

The Impact

While one might scoff at the $1 billion price tag, think about the reduction in the corruption tax each of us pays. The $90 billion of corporate welfare Garrett voted against removing a little while ago is just one example of where special interest crafted legislation costs taxpayers. Eliminate all of that and how much could we save? How much lower could our taxes go?

Also, clean elections would involve more people in the process. If a candidate had to come up with 2,600 donations from individuals living within the District, they would have to spend less time trying to woo the special interests and out of state mega donors, and more time with the actual people they represent. Imagine what might happen if candidates actually had to meet with the people they serve in order to get the money they need to get elected.

Sure, the special interests would still be players in the primary, but how difficult would it be to justify to the masses not participating in the program for the general because a candidate is a slave to the PACs? In many cases, the amount of money that would be provided is more than many candidates raise from individual and PAC contributions combined in an election cycle. The program eliminates the undo pressure so many feel to kowtow to the special interests as opposed to legislating according to their constituents' interests and beliefs.

I realize this may be a 1,200 word idealistic pipe dream, that would need a lot of work, but as a government intended to be of the people, by the people and for the people: if we wanted this there should be no reason we can't have it.

Faith in our elected officials continues to spiral downward, and corruption and campaign donation motivated partisanship are the primary reasons. While someone like Barak Obama will forgo PAC money, many politicians can't seem to get their hands out of the cookie jar. Having clean elections would force the candidates to change and has the potential of restoring faith in government in a way the super majority of our current officials can't seem to figure out how to do on their own.