How Public Campaign Financing Empowers Small Donors Nationwide

This article by Hazel Millard and Mariana Paez is published by The Brennan Center for Justice. Here is an excerpt:

Public campaign finan­cing is a reform on the march. Recog­niz­ing it as the most power­ful response to the last decade’s explo­sion of big money in polit­ics, state and local govern­ments have enacted new programs that will soon be fuel­ing people-powered campaigns.

In New York State, candid­ates for statewide and legis­lat­ive office will start opting in to the new small donor match­ing program as soon as this Novem­ber. State legis­lat­ors and Gov. Kathy Hochul set the program up for success earlier this week with an invest­ment of $20.5 million in the state budget for program admin­is­tra­tion and future match­ing funds, a step towards secur­ing a more equit­able demo­cracy in the state. The city of Baltimore and multiple Mary­land counties will also imple­ment their new programs soon.

These devel­op­ments come on top of the other 14 states and 19 muni­cip­al­it­ies that have adop­ted public finan­cing systems. Lawmakers and advoc­ates are also push­ing to bring new or strengthened programs to their communit­ies, such as in Oregon, Arizona, and Mary­land.

Read the full article here. Also, visit the main Democracy Chronicles section on American Democracy or our articles on Money Politics and Worldwide Corruption.