Green Party: Public campaign funding bill is rigged

The Green Party says HB 4694, touted for public financing of Congressional campaigns, is biased against third parties. Originally posted at Democracy in Action.

Now, the bill does a number of good things, including barring paid, professional petition-signature gatherers. (Not sure how this or other bill provisions will pass the “money is speech” SCOTUS sniffer, but that’s another story.

But, there are legitimate third-party concerns.

A 10 percent of the total vote bar for partial funding is too high; 5 percent, or even 3 percent for a dribble of partial funding, would be much better.

Now, I don’t believe the Green Party’s official claim that liberal Democrats are sponsoring this bill because of a panic over a Green insurgency. Nonetheless, it has troubling provisions, most notably this.

Section 301: Section 315 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (2 U.S.C. 441a) is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection;


`(k) No person may make any independent expenditure with respect to an election for the office of Representative in, or Delegate or Resident Commissioner to, the Congress.'.

So, if you fall below 10 percent of total votes on a petition as a third-party candidate, and don’t qualify for the federal “grassroots” funding, that apparently means you can’t spend anything on the campaign? That’s what it looks like.

And I don’t blame the Greens for screaming bloody murder.

Sections 302 and 325 go too far on restricting “attack ads,” too.

Plus, it does nothing to address spiraling TV time costs with the stick of TV broadcast license review.

And, I haven’t mentioned all of the First Amendment concerns this bill raises, just a couple.