A new website advocates passage of S. 223, a bill relating to the disclosure of campaign finance reports for Senate candidates. The legislation has not been brought to the floor, according to a Campaign Finance Institute email I received, because of an issue surrounding a proposed amendment to the bill.
EMILY’S List
The web has some information on the author of EMILY’s List v. FEC. Click here for the District Court’s website’s biography of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. Wikipedia also has an entry. A previous opinion (finding constitutional BCRA’s electioneering communications provisions), quoting Elihu Root, is familiar to those who follow campaign finance law. Warning, the file is 706 pages (“The result is that broadcast advertisements paid for by corporations or labor unions, aired in close proximity to an election that clearly identify a federal candidate, and are targeted to that candidate’s electorate, need to be paid for with federal funds from a segregated account. Congress, therefore, is not prohibiting speech by any corporation or labor union; it is merely requiring these organizations to pay for speech that ostensibly influences federal elections with segregated funds that are regulated under FECA.”) FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life also discusses the issue (“Because WRTL’s ads are not express advocacy or its functional equivalent, and because appellants identify no interest sufficiently compelling to justify burdening WRTL’s speech, we hold that BCRA § 203 is unconstitutional as applied to WRTL’s ‘Wedding,’ ‘Loan,’ and ‘Waiting’ ads.”)
CA: Public Financing
CCP has this interesting post on public financing in California.
Some members of the California legislature are apparently a little hard of hearing.
The California Senate Appropriations Committee held a hearing today on A.B. 583, which seeks to establish a government-financed election program for the 2014 Secretary of State race. A.B. 583 amends the Political Reform Act of 1974, an initiative measure. The portions of A.B. 583 that amends the Political Reform Act of 1974 must also be approved by the voters at the June 8, 2010 statewide primary to take effect.
But just two years ago California voters declared loud and clear that they did not want government-financed elections. Nearly 75 percent of voters rejected Proposition 89 which sought to establish a government-financed election system.