New Brookings Institution Report Backs Public Funding

In a new report released today at the Brookings Institution, four leading scholars in the area of campaign finance endorse the You Street mission by arguing that the time for voluntary public funding of all state, federal, and presidential campaigns has come.

The authors - Thomas Mann, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, Michael Malbin, Executive Director, Campaign Finance Institute, Anthony Corrado, Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, and Norman Ornstein, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute – praise the groundbreaking capacity of technology to facilitate political participation, but stress that new tools cannot mobilize small donors and volunteers by themselves.

And just as technology won’t fundamentally reverse big money’s grip on Washington, neither will more incremental restrictions on campaign spending or increasingly tighter contribution limits. Instead, these scholars call for new approach, emphasizing greater access to information, simplified accounting and disclosure, and most importantly, public funding of elections including multiple matching funds for small donations, qualifying thresholds and funding maximums.

The report focuses on the difficulty of trying to limit the influence of wealthy interests “from the top,” and calls on lawmakers to re-focus campaign reform on incentivizing the involvement of everyday, average citizens (what a revolutionary idea!):

“…if enough people come into the system at the low end there may be less reason to worry about the top. … [H]eightened participation would be healthy for its own sake. A more engaged citizenry would mean a greater share of the public following political events and participating in public life. And the evidence seems to suggest that giving and doing are reciprocal activities: volunteering stimulates giving, while giving small amounts seems to heighten non-financial forms of participation by people who feel more invested in the process. For these reasons, we aim to promote equality and civic engagement by enlarging the participatory pie instead of shrinking it.”

The research and findings in this new report are to be commended and celebrated. With the support of today’s leading election scholars and your continued efforts, we’re coming ever closer to real, meaningful reform.