December 23, 2004

Do Candidates Abuse 'Clean Elections' Systems?

What Arizona And Maine Have To Say

Over at BlueOregon they continue to talk of the Clean Money proposal being advanced by Commissioner Erik Sten and City Auditor Gary Blackmer. Well, actually, they're discussing the proposal in the context of a challenge issued to Phil Stanford as a way to test how difficult it is to raise the threshold seed money, in $5 increments, required under the plan.

Last time we weighed in on the proposal, we were trying to counter the arguments that such a system would inevitably and inherently lead to some sort of rampant abuse.

As part of that, we asserted that the similar systems in place in Arizona and Maine had not found such rampant abuse, and continue to function much as planned. It was our contention that claiming the local system would be rife with abuse without researching whether or not this has happened under other similar systems amounted to little more than baseless smearing of a proposal they simply didn't like.

In the time since that last item of ours on the subject, we emailed authorities in Arizona and Maine to ask them about abuses of their respective systems. Here's what they had to say.

Autumn R. Southard, Voter Education Manager for the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, had this to say on the matter of abuse in Arizona, which has had a "clean elections" system in operation since 2000, after voters approved it in 1998:

We monitor all campaign finance reports and conduct random audits. We also have an enforcement process that allows for outside complaints to be generated and potentially investigated. In instances where candidates have attempted to use campaign funds for something other than running a campaign, we have made them repay all of the funding they received or fined them up to $15,000. We have only had a few of these instances.

Southard highlighted the rules in place regarding proper and improper use of "clean elections" campaign funds by candidates as examples of the Arizona system's protections against abuse.

Jonathan Wayne, Executive Director of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, offered this on the matter of abuse in Maine, where voters approved a "clean elections" system in 1996:

Very few abuses have occurred in Maine.  There were a couple of cases in 2000 that turned into significant enforcement actions.  One candidate used the funds to start his own political consulting business and the other used the funds for significant personal expenses such as meals.  We are auditing the 2004 candidates now.

Wayne focused on rules regarding disclosure of expenditures, civil and criminal penalties, and complaints by opposing candidates as examples of the Maine system's protections against abuse.

Of course, the question in this item's headline is a ludicrous one, because there will always be candidates which will abuse whatever system is placed before them. The point of the experiences of Arizona and Maine, however, is that such "clean elections" system do not result in the sort of rampant political wilding predicted by critics of the local Sten/Blackmer proposal.

This, of course, does nothing to address other aspects of the local proposal which have raised other concerns. But it should perhaps do something to counter the unresearched charges raised by critics that such systems are inherently untenable because of inevitable and debilitation abuse.

Posted at 05:20 PM | PermalinkComments (4) | TrackBacks (1)
More In Law Enforcement & Legal Issues, Metro-Area Politics

« Previous Next »