Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Protestors holding signs that read "protect trans kids."

Trump's Orders Threaten Transgender Americans’ Rights

From Diplomat to Dissenter: Why I Protest Trump’s America

From Diplomat to Dissenter: Why I Protest Trump’s America

Trump Declares War on Democratic Cities

Trump Declares War on Democratic Cities

Books in a school library.

The Censors Have Names. Use Them.

A Trump 2020 flag outside of a home.

Trump’s 2.0 Actions Have Harmed Rural America Who Voted for Him

Public funding worked as designed in its newest venue, advocates say

Public funding worked as designed in its newest venue, advocates say
Malte Mueller / Getty Images
Sara Swann
By Sara SwannDec 20, 2019
Sara Swann

As a staff writer, Sara covers a variety of democracy reform issues, including voting rights, money in politics, gerrymandering and civic education. Prior to joining The Fulcrum in May 2019, Sara reported on local government on Maryland's Eastern Shore for the USA Today network. She is a native West Virginian and a graduate of Syracuse University.

See More Writings by author

Berkeley, the renowned progressive university town on San Francisco Bay, is the most recent place in the country to subsidize local elections. And the system worked as designed in its debut a year ago, cutting down the influence of big money and boosting competitiveness in the City Council elections.

That's the conclusion reached by MapLight, a nonprofit organization that follows the influence of money in politics, in a report this week.

While the public financing program for presidential campaigns has gone unused for almost a decade, because candidates haven't been willing to make the tradeoffs required, the concept is gaining steady acceptance elsewhere.

Berkeley, a city of 122,000, is among 20 municipalities (five others in California) and 19 states that spend taxpayer dollars on campaigns for local office in the forms of grants or matching funds to candidates, or tax breaks or vouchers for donors. Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C., will begin public funding of local races next year.

Fourteen people ran for the Berkeley council in 2018, the highest number since the start of the decade, and 10 of them agreed to adhere to contribution limits from others in return for public matching funds. In an election without any primaries but with ranked-choice voting, the winners of all four seats came from that group.

Only candidates who accept donations of $50 or less qualify for a 6-to-1 match from public coffers, up to $40,000. Four candidates raised enough small-dollar donations to get the maximum, and three of them won. The fourth winner who took part in the program was a senior on the flagship University of California campus.

In the end, the candidates who took public money collected a combined $424,000 from public and private sources, while those who didn't had a combined fundraising haul of $52,000. With the need for private funding eased for those in the program, Maplight concluded, candidates had more time to focus on meeting voters and talking about local issues.

Outside influences were also deterred by the public financing system. In both the 2014 and 2016 elections, businesses and political committees gave about $10,000 combined to council candidates. This fell to just $4,500 last year, with most going to one of the non-participating (and losing) candidates. In addition, last year's election saw fewer donations from outside of Berkeley and out of state.

Latest news

A doctor and patient holding hands.
Health

The Collapse of Patient Trust: How U.S. Healthcare Lost Its Way

A child looking at a smartphone.
Media & Technology

The Increase in Autism and Social Media – Coincidence or Causal?

A Revolution in Congressional Decision-Making
Governance & Legislation

A Revolution in Congressional Decision-Making

Read More

U.S. President Barack Obama speaking on the phone in the Oval Office.

U.S. President Barack Obama talks President Barack Obama talks with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan during a phone call from the Oval Office on November 2, 2009 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, The White House

‘Obama, You're 15 Years Too Late!’

The mid-decade redistricting fight continues, while the word “hypocrisy” has become increasingly common in the media.

The origin of mid-decade redistricting dates back to the early history of the United States. However, its resurgence and legal acceptance primarily stem from the Texas redistricting effort in 2003, a controversial move by the Republican Party to redraw the state's congressional districts, and the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. This decision, which confirmed that mid-decade redistricting is not prohibited by federal law, was a significant turning point in the acceptance of this practice.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand of a person casting a ballot at a polling station during voting.

Gerrymandering silences communities and distorts elections. Proportional representation offers a proven path to fairer maps and real democracy.

Getty Images, bizoo_n

Gerrymandering Today, Gerrymandering Tomorrow, Gerrymandering Forever

In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." (Watch the video of his speech.) As a politically aware high school senior, I was shocked by the venom and anger in his voice—the open, defiant embrace of systematic disenfranchisement, so different from the quieter racism I knew growing up outside Boston.

Today, watching politicians openly rig elections, I feel that same disbelief—especially seeing Republican leaders embrace that same systematic approach: gerrymandering now, gerrymandering tomorrow, gerrymandering forever.

Keep ReadingShow less
An oversized ballot box surrounded by people.

Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

No Country for Young Politicians—and How To Fix That

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

Keep ReadingShow less
How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

Demonstrators gather outside of The United States Supreme Court during an oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford to call for an end to partisan gerrymandering on October 3, 2017 in Washington, DC

Getty Images, Olivier Douliery

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2025