The DISCLOSE Act is sponsored in the House by Representative Van Hollen and in the Senate by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and has been introduced in each of the past two Congresses. In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court, while striking down the ban on corporate expenditures in federal elections, upheld, by an 8 […]
The Stop Super PAC-Candidate Coordination Act is also sponsored by Representatives Price and Van Hollen and contains just the super PAC/coordination provisions found in the Empowering Citizens Act. Both bills define a super PAC to be coordinated with a candidate when: – the super PAC is directly or indirectly established by or at the request […]
The Empowering Citizens Act, sponsored by Representatives David Price (D-NC) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), is the most comprehensive campaign finance reform legislation in Congress. The legislation would repair the presidential public financing system, create a public financing system for congressional races, shut down individual-candidate super PACs and strengthen the rules prohibiting coordination between candidates […]
Democracy 21 joined with the Campaign Legal Center yesterday in filing rulemaking comments urging the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to follow the Supreme Court’s recommendations in McCutcheon v. FEC to prevent corruption of candidates and circumvention of the base contribution limits after the court struck down the aggregate cap on contributions. The watchdog groups pressed […]
Last week, Democracy 21 joined with Public Citizen to file an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court defending the constitutionality of a Florida law which bans the solicitation of campaign contributions by state court judges. The brief was filed on December 23, 2014 in the case of Yulee v. The Florida Bar. The State of […]
Today, Democracy 21 joined the Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen in filing an amici brief in Rocky Mountain Gun Owners v. Gessler, urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado to dismiss a challenge to the Colorado Constitution’s “electioneering communications” disclosure provisions and deny a preliminary injunction. The state law is materially […]
Federal District Court in Van Hollen Case Strikes FEC Regulation that Gutted Contribution Disclosure Requirement for Outside Groups Making Expenditures Close to an Election The federal district court in Washington D.C. today struck down a regulation issued by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that has severely limited the reporting of donors to groups making “electioneering […]
The Huffington Post A Call to Arms By: Fred Wertheimer In 1789, the Founding Fathers created a constitutional system of government by the people. In 2010, five Supreme Court Justices — Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Alito — changed it to a constitutional system of government by millionaires, billionaires and corporations. In the Citizens United […]
The New Yorker – The Money Midterms: A Scandal in Slow Motion By: Evan Osnos In 1971, after studying law at Harvard, Fred Wertheimer became the chief lobbyist for Common Cause, a non-profit that aimed to limit the corrosive influence of money in politics. He was thirty-two years old. “Watergate comes along the next year, […]
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