On November 5th, we voters need to go to the polls and inform our Legislature that we still support using just a few of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars to keep democracy alive in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Legislature has placed an advisory referendum question on the ballot to measure public support for the Clean Elections law. Ballot Question #3 asks: "Do you support taxpayer money being used to fund political campaigns for public office in the commonwealth?"

I urge you to vote YES. You are being tested. And it is a trick question.

Here are a few of the tricks: House Speaker Thomas Finneran and the other Legislative leaders who devised the wording on this question, do not mention that we voters already passed the Clean Elections public campaign financing law by a 2-1 margin in 1998. They fail to tell you that the Clean Elections law is a voluntary system that provides public funds only to candidates who demonstrate broad public support by collecting small matching contributions and agree to a campaign contribution limit of $100 per person (the private money system allows contributions up to $500 per person). Nor does their question clarify that the law we already passed requires participating candidates to limit total campaign spending and bans all special interest money from Clean Elections campaigns.

Instead, they crafted a cynically-worded and misleading question designed to elicit a "no" response from a tax-averse public grimly watching state services disappear. Polling consultants know that voters are likely to reject their own prison system if asked, "do you support taxpayer money being used to provide free housing for convicted criminals?" And just in case tricky wording alone doesn’t do the job, Speaker Finneran is now reported to be raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a "no" vote.

We did not approve the Clean Elections law in 1998 to provide "welfare for politicians" as critics have charged. We voted for the tools to build a functioning democracy. Don’t be fooled by the wording of Question #3. A YES Vote is a vote for democracy.

But if enough voters answer "no," the Legislature will likely use that response as political cover to repeal the Clean Elections law. And if they succeed, it may well be the last time they need to ask for your advice…about anything. Why? Because most of them won’t need your vote.

We need Clean Elections because the private money campaign system is no longer working. In 1990, three quarters of Massachusetts Legislative seats were contested. The reverse is true in 2002. This year, nearly 75% of incumbent Massachusetts Legislators will be re-elected without having to face an opponent or answer to the public for their voting records. The private money campaign finance system that our Legislative leaders like so much attracts more money and fewer voters each year while offering diminishing choices. The publicly-funded Clean Elections option is designed to increase competition by creating a more level campaign playing field.

Do Clean Elections work? Although we haven’t seen the system fully tried yet in Massachusetts, two other states have approved Clean Elections public funding laws that have been working well for two election cycles. In Maine, 62% of all candidates on the fall ballot are participating in Clean Elections, and 53% in Arizona, double the number of candidates that participated two years ago.

In Arizona, Clean Elections is engaging many more voters in elections funding this year than ever before. According to Cecilia Martinez, executive director of the Clean Elections Institute, "Candidates collected nearly 90,000 qualifying contributions from Arizona voters. That is an overwhelming increase in voter participation from the few thousand Arizonans who contributed to candidate campaigns in 1998 before the passage of Clean Elections."

How much will taxpayer funded Clean Elections really cost us? The Massachusetts Clean Elections law limits the amount that the Legislature can appropriate for a public campaign financing system to one tenth of one percent of the state budget. That's $10 million per year out of a $21 Billion state budget. The Massachusetts system is capped at a maximum of less than $4 per taxpayer per year. In Maine, the actual cost of the Clean Elections system in 2000 was 69 cents per resident, 66 cents in Arizona. Don’t let the Legislature fool you into believing we cannot afford to fund a competitive democracy. The real alternative is being forced to live with the taxing and spending decisions of a Legislature that is no longer accountable to the voters.

Despite overwhelming public support for our Clean Elections law four years ago, the Legislature has done everything in its power, short of repealing the law, to prevent a full demonstration of Clean Elections’ potential for building a competitive electoral system. The Legislature delayed implementation in the 2000 cycle and then refused to fund the law in 2002. Only after the Supreme Judicial Court stepped in, declared the Legislature’s stalling act unconstitutional, and approved the auctioning of state property to fund the law, did the Legislature finally agree to partially fund the Clean Elections law mid-way through this campaign season. By then, only a small handful of qualified candidates had stayed on board to test the Clean Elections option.

Let’s surprise Speaker Finneran and his supporters in the Legislature by giving them some advice they aren’t expecting to hear. What they don’t seem to understand is that Clean Elections is ultimately not about money, it’s about democracy. We Massachusetts taxpayers have already said we are willing to pay a little for a publicly-financed election system. What we want are the tools to create competition, greater accountability, more public participation…in short, real democracy. If you agree, vote YES on Ballot Question #3!

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