Issue Position: Democracy Dollars

Issue Position

The trend over the past half century has been to allow unfettered spending in elections. This culminated in the decision made in Citizens United, allowing unlimited money to be spent by corporations in elections.

It's no surprise that this has resulted in mega-donors flooding the pipes of our democracy.

We need to diminish the influence that mega-wealthy individuals and companies have in our elections. While we must push for a Constitutional amendment to allow our campaign finance laws to properly limit the power that the top 1% have, we must act much faster to save our democratic processes. To do so, we must make it possible for all Americans to contribute to candidates they feel strongly about, in order to drown out the voices of the few who can spend millions of dollars to influence our politicians.

The easiest way to do this is to provide Americans with publicly funded vouchers they can use to donate to politicians that they support. Every American gets $100 a year to give to candidates, use it or lose it. These Democracy Dollars would, by the sheer volume of the US population, drown out the influence of mega-donors. It has been used in Seattle to great effect, and we can take their program national to move towards publicly funded elections.

Source