Americans are understandably cynical about a political system that has been hijacked by billionaires and special interests who will spend whatever it takes to crowd out the voices of everyday Americans. And with the rise of unlimited, secret spending in our political process, it is virtually impossible for anyone to really know who or what is influencing our elected officials. On issues from climate change to equal pay and immigration reform, voters won’t believe Washington will work for them unless we take on the power and stranglehold that wealthy interests have over our political system.

Hillary Clinton has made revitalization of our democracy a key pillar of her campaign. She will fight to ensure that our democracy works for everyday Americans and leads to government of, by, and for the people, not just the wealthy and well-connected. Her proposals will curb the outsized influence of big money in American politics, bring sunshine to secret spending, and institute real reform to raise the voices of regular voters. Key proposals include:

1. Overturning Citizens United Decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, by a 5-4 margin, the Citizens United case helped unleash hundreds of millions of dollars of secret, unaccountable money into U.S. elections that is drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans and distorting our democracy. To undo the harm of Citizens United and other wrongheaded campaign finance court decisions, Clinton will:
   • Appoint Supreme Court justices who value the right to vote over the right of billionaires to buy elections. Clinton will appoint Supreme Court justices who understand that the Constitution protects citizens’ right to participate fully in the democratic process, and that decisions like Citizens United, which upended campaign finance law, and Shelby County, which gutted the Voting Rights Act, are not good for America.
   • Support a constitutional amendment. Clinton supports amending the Constitution to allow Americans to establish common sense rules to protect against the undue influence of billionaires and special interests and to restore the role of average voters in elections.
2. Ending Secret, Unaccountable Money in Politics Outside groups have spent more than $600 million in secret money in the three federal elections since Citizens United, yet it is difficult to know who or what is behind that spending. Clinton believes that the public has a right to know who is spending money to influence elections and the actual sources of funds for those expenditures. To increase transparency in our political system and end the era of unaccountable money in politics, Clinton will:
   • Push for federal legislation to require effective public disclosure of political spending. Clinton will require outside groups that engage in significant political spending to timely disclose significant donors that support those expenditures. She will also require disclosure of significant transfers between organizations and close other loopholes that allow individuals, corporations and others to hide their political spending.
   • Promote SEC rulemaking requiring publicly traded companies to disclose all political spending to their shareholders. Clinton believes that information about how corporate funds are being used to fuel political activity and influence elected officials is material to investment decisions and should be made available to shareholders.
   • Sign an Executive Order requiring federal government contractors to fully disclose all political spending. If Congress fails to act on common sense campaign finance reform, Clinton will use executive authority to increase transparency of political spending by all companies that are awarded federal contracts.
3. Amplifying the Voices of Everyday Americans Outsized political influence by wealthy corporations and individuals has discouraged everyday Americans from participating in the political process. In the 2014 election, the top 100 campaign donors alone spent nearly as much as all 4.75 million small donors combined. Meanwhile, 2014 also marked the first time in almost a quarter century that the total number of donors reported to have given to political campaigns decreased from the prior midterm election.

The current system creates disincentives for voters to feel like their participation matters and for candidates to focus more of their attention on regular voters. It also sets up barriers to ordinary people with extraordinary ideas seeking elective office and serving their country, especially women and people of color. Clinton believes we need a system that empowers all citizens to fully participate and have their voices heard. She will:

• Establish a small donor matching system for presidential and congressional candidates that will incentivize small donors to participate in elections and candidates to spend more time engaging a broad, representative cross-section of constituents, and will include:
  • Matching funds for small donations. To increase the role and influence of everyday Americans who cannot write large checks, the program will provide multiple matching funds for small donations.
  • Lower contribution limits. Candidates who opt to participate in the program must agree to a substantially lower limit on how much money they can receive from any individual donor.
  • Cap on public matching funds. To ensure fiscal sustainability, there will be a reasonable limit on the total amount of public matching funds available to each candidate, but no limit on the number of small donations candidates can receive from their supporters up to the individual donor contribution limit.
  • Qualifying contribution thresholds. To qualify for matching funds, candidates must first demonstrate that they have sufficient public support for a viable campaign by raising a minimum number of small donations from their constituents.

Finally, for our campaign finance system to have meaning, Clinton believes we must vigorously enforce our campaign finance laws.

This is only one part of Clinton’s comprehensive agenda to revitalize our democracy so that it values the voices of everyday Americans, not just those at the top.

Clinton recently laid out her vision for protecting voting rights and expanding access to the ballot boxfor all Americans, calling for:

• Universal, automatic voter registration, where every citizen in every state in the union would be automatically registered to vote when they turn eighteen—unless they actively choose to opt out;
• A new national standard of no fewer than 20 days of early, in-person voting in every state, including opportunities for weekend and evening voting;
• Congress to move quickly to pass legislation to repair the damage to the Voting Rights Act done by the Supreme Court’s Shelby County decision; and
• Implementation of the recommendations of the President’s bipartisan presidential commission to improve voting, which includes expanding early, absentee, and mail voting; providing online voter registration; and establishing the principle that no one should ever have to wait more than 30 minutes to vote.

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• REACTION
• Brennan Center for Justice
• September 8, 2015

• Hillary Clinton Introduces Smart Campaign Finance Reform Agenda

  Today, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed a detailed, concrete plan for campaign finance reform. If enacted it would fundamentally change the role of big money in American politics. The proposal targets what the Brennan Center has long advocated as the three most critical areas for reform:
• Jurisprudential Change: Clinton calls for a push to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and other misguided court rulings. Read more about the drive for a new campaign finance constitutional doctrine in the Brennan Center’sRethinking Campaign Finance: Toward a Pro-Democracy Jurisprudence.
   
• Small Donor Public Financing: Clinton supports establishing a small donor matching system for presidential and congressional candidates, which would enable a broader section of the American public to have their voices heard in elections and public policy debates. Read more in the Brennan Center’s Empowering Small Donors in Federal Elections and Donor Diversity Through Public Matching Funds.
   
• Increased Disclosure of Political Spending: Clinton proposes a push for federal legislation to increase disclosure, new SEC rulemaking requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political spending to their shareholders, and an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose all political spending. Read more in the Brennan Center white paper Requiring Government Contractors to Disclose Political Spending, which urged President Obama to issue this order, and our testimony supporting the DISCLOSE Act in Congress.

Reducing the overwhelming influence of big money over our elections is an issue of great concern to a broad swath of the American public. So far, this plan is the most detailed blueprint for political reform issued by a presidential candidate. All candidates should issue detailed plans to increase transparency, empower average voters, and push back against the Supreme Court’s misguided and harmful rulings on campaign finance.

Read Fighting Big Money, Empowering People: A 21st Century Democracy Agenda, published by the Brennan Center and 12 other national good government groups.

Read more about the Brennan Center’s work on money in politics.

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Democracy 21
September 8, 2015

Fred Wertheimer: Democracy 21 Praises Campaign Finance Reform Plan Issued by Clinton

Democracy 21 applauds the very important and valuable campaign finance reform policy plan former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued today.

The plan contains essential elements to repair our corrupt campaign finance system and to restore the integrity of our elections.

On July 23, 2015, Democracy 21 and eleven other reform organizations sent a 21^st Century Democracy Agenda to all presidential candidates and requested their responses to the proposed Agenda.

The Clinton plan supports a number of core policy proposals that are contained in our Agenda and will help inject these critical issues into the national debate.

Senator Bernie Sanders and former Governor Martin O’Malley have also made positive statements on the need for campaign finance reforms and we look forward to seeing their formal proposals on these issues as well.

Since the Citizens United decision in 2010, our political system has seen a growing and dangerous role for unlimited and secret contributions in American politics.

Today, the presidential primaries are dominated by individual-candidate Super PACs that are being financed by unlimited, huge contributions from millionaires and billionaires.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in secret contributions are being laundered into presidential and congressional elections through nonprofit tax-exempt organizations.

Ordinary Americans are being shut out of the political system as their small contributions are considered less and less important in the post-Citizen United world.

This is not the representative system of government envisioned in our Constitution.

The Clinton plan would provide an opportunity for ordinary Americans to fight back by having their small contributions matched with multiple public funds. This would increase the importance of small donors, dilute the role of big money and provide an alternative way for candidates to finance their elections.

The Clinton plan would end secret money in our elections by passing new disclosure legislation to require public disclosure of significant donors to organizations making political expenditures and by preventing transfers between organizations from serving as a means for evading the new disclosure requirements.

The Clinton plan also would overturn the disastrous Citizens United decision, either through a Constitutional Amendment or through the appointment of new Justices who would support a new campaign finance jurisprudence to allow necessary regulation of money in the political process.

The fundamental reforms proposed by Clinton would go a long way to addressing the most dangerous government integrity problems facing the country.

But additional reforms are necessary as well. We call on Secretary Clinton to include further important policy proposals in her plan in the weeks and months ahead to deal with other serious problems with our campaign finance system.

The Federal Election Commission is a nonfunctioning agency and as a result campaigns and political operatives know they can ignore the campaign finance laws without concern about being held accountable.

The Clinton plan recognizes that vigorous enforcement of the campaign finance laws is necessary if the laws are to be effective, but Clinton provides no specifics on how to achieve this goal. The Clinton plan should include additional information on fixing or replacing the FEC and on the use of the Justice Department to play a more active role in enforcing the campaign finance laws.

Individual-candidate Super PACs are being used by almost every presidential candidate to circumvent candidate contribution limits. If these Super PACs are not shut down, the candidate contributions limits, upheld by the Supreme Court to prevent corruption, will be eviscerated.

Legislation pending in Congress, sponsored by Representatives David Price and Chris Van Hollen and Senator Tom Udall, would end individual candidate Super PACs and strengthen the rules prohibiting coordination between other outside spending groups and candidates. The Clinton plan should address the issues of shutting down individual-candidate Super PACs and strengthening coordination restrictions.

We intend to press Hillary Clinton to add to her plan the items cited above and to publicly promote her reform agenda as a top priority in the unfolding national debate about the major issues facing the country.

Much needs to be done to move from a proposal to fundamental change in our political system. Commitments to pursue major campaign finance reforms have been made by previous presidential candidates and then ignored once they were elected President.

We intend to press Hillary Clinton to spell out in detail what steps she would take, if elected, to promote her reform agenda in order to enact the reforms. In the end, the ultimate test on campaign finance issues for any officeholder is the specific steps they are prepared to take to promote the reforms they support in order to fix our corrupt campaign finance system.

We look forward to hearing from all presidential candidates on where they stand on the 21^st Century Democracy Agenda. 

Democracy 21 is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization that does not support or oppose candidates for public office.