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Democracy Madness: Follow the money

Democracy Madness: Follow the money
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So far, ranked-choice voting and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact have earned spots in the Democracy Madness Final Four, our competition to find the single most important change championed by democracy reformers. Now we turn to ideas for changing the role of money in politics.

The voters surprised us in the Elections region, repeatedly going for underdogs. But we expect to see the higher-seeded reforms perform better this time around as the top-ranked proposals, repealing the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and removing the "dark" from dark money, are major elements of the democracy reform agenda.


This bracket of 16 is sprinkled with ideas around public financing of campaigns, restrictions on lobbyists, and new disclosure requirements for both fundraising and campaign spending. While many of these proposals can appear somewhat technical or arcane, one in particular may resonate with voters: the demand for presidential candidates to release their tax returns. This has become a major issue now that President Trump is taking his refusal to show his 1040s all the way to the Supreme Court.

First-round voting continues through Tuesday, with succeeding rounds taking place over the next week and a half. Two weeks from today, we'll kick off the "best of the rest" bracket, to be followed by the Final Four.

Click the Vote Now button to make your eight selections. (You can click the matchups, then each label, for more about the proposals.)


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(Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Could Trump’s campaign against the media come back to bite conservatives?

In the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’sapparently temporary— suspension from late-night TV, a (tragically small) number of prominent conservatives and Republicans have taken exception to the Trump administration’s comfort with “jawboning” critics into submission.

Sen. Ted Cruz condemned the administration’s “mafioso behavior.” He warned that “going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again — wins the White House … they will silence us.” Cruz added during his Friday podcast. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”

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The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, we remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

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That insight has lost none of its force. Some people do restrain themselves. They accumulate enough to live well and then turn to service, family, or community. Others never stop. Given the chance, they gather wealth and power without limit. Left unchecked, selfishness concentrates material and social resources in the hands of a few, leaving many behind and eroding the sense of shared citizenship on which democracy depends.

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