Meet the reformer: 10 questions with Katie Fahey
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Represent San Diego Presents: The ABC's and PACs of Campaign Finance
Organizer: RepresentUs
Local ethics attorney Matt Strabone will present "The ABCs and PACs of Campaign Finance" discussing all the ways money corrupts our political system and 5 ways we can push back at a local level. Join us for Matt's presentation and then learn how to get involved helping our local chapter of Represent Us bring Ranked Choice Voting and Campaign Finance Reform to San Diego.
If you are interested in ending corruption in California and want to learn how you can contribute, join this meeting and become a part of the movement!
Location: Linda Vista Library, 2160 Ulric St., San Diego, CA
Public funding worked as designed in its newest venue, advocates say
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.
In Albuquerque, a city known for its annual balloon festival, voters rejected the trial ballon for publicly funded donation vouchers.
Two wins and a loss for those who would remake campaign finance rules
Voters in two Western cities have delivered a pair of small victories and one substantial loss to advocates for reducing the importance of big money in elections.
Albuquerque narrowly rejected a ballot measure Tuesday to start a system of publicly funded donation vouchers for supporting municipal candidates. The idea has been hailed as a breakthrough for promoting a broader base of interest in elections while diluting the power of corporate cash over campaigns, while critics say it's a totally wrong way to spend taxpayer money.
The voters of New Mexico's biggest city did, however, decide to expand an existing public financing system for mayoral candidates willing to limit their own spending. And the people of San Francisco voted to limit contributions to local candidates and require the people who buy advertising in city elections to disclose their identities.
California currently provides voting aid in 16 languages. A state appeals court gas ruled the roster must be expanded by 14 Asian languages.
14 new languages coming to California's polling places next fall
Elections across a large swath of California a year from now must be conducted in 14 additional languages in order to stop disenfranchising at least 800,000 Asian-American voters, a state appeals court has ruled.
Acting on a lawsuit brought by several civil rights groups, a three-judge panel in San Francisco unanimously ordered the changes Monday after deciding the state's top election official, Democratic Secretary of State Alex Padilla, was setting an improperly high threshold for deciding when to offer voting assistance in some languages other than English.
The ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeals could have a measurable impact on 2020 turnout in the nation's largest and most linguistically diverse state. While its 55 electoral votes will be a virtual lock for the Democratic nominee, at least half a dozen congressional races and dozens of state and local contests look to be competitive.
