State-lev­el ini­tia­tives will be an impor­tant path to pro­gres­sive reform in the com­ing years, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the area of cam­paign finance, and Maine is at the fore­front of democ­ra­tiz­ing elec­tions at the local level.

"I like to say that democracy isn’t a noun; it’s a verb. It’s something we have to constantly do."

In Novem­ber, the state passed a ranked-choice vot­ing ini­tia­tive, which pre­vents third-par­ty can­di­dates from split­ting the votes of one par­ty and hand­ing the elec­tion to an unpop­u­lar can­di­date. That prob­lem has allowed Paul LeP­age, the hard-right Repub­li­can ide­o­logue who is Maine’s cur­rent gov­er­nor, to remain in pow­er. LeP­age won his bid in 2014 with 48 per­cent of the vote, and he won in 2010 with some 38 per­cent, large­ly because Democ­rats split their vote between his two oppo­nents. Under the new sys­tem, vot­ers will rank their pref­er­ences rather than choos­ing just one candidate.

Ranked-choice reform was a mile­stone in a much longer sto­ry. In 1996, Maine vot­ers approved a clean elec­tions ini­tia­tive that pro­vid­ed for pub­lic financ­ing of leg­isla­tive and guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paigns. In 2011, courts struck down a pro­vi­sion of the pro­gram that gave can­di­dates who took part match­ing funds from the state — that is, funds to match the amount of pri­vate mon­ey raised by their oppo­nents. With­out that pro­vi­sion, the can­di­dates who took part in the pro­gram were vul­ner­a­ble to being swamped by out­side spend­ing. Par­tic­i­pa­tion declined, from a high of 81 per­cent of can­di­dates in 2008 to 53 per­cent in the 2014 elec­tion cycle.

Last year, vot­ers passed a ref­er­en­dum to address the prob­lem. The pro­gram now works like this: Can­di­dates who opt in to the clean elec­tions pro­gram must prove their via­bil­i­ty by rais­ing $5 dona­tions from a cer­tain num­ber of one-time donors. After this qual­i­fy­ing round, cer­tain bench­marks trig­ger more fund­ing. Each time the can­di­date pass­es a bench­mark, they receive a new round of funds.

The reformed pro­gram was in effect in Novem­ber and seems to have revi­tal­ized clean elec­tions in Maine, with 62 per­cent of can­di­dates for the state leg­is­la­ture tak­ing part.

To help explain Maine’s clean elec­tions reform, In These Times recent­ly spoke with Andrew Bossie, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Maine Cit­i­zens for Clean Elec­tions (MCCE) — the group behind the change. Here’s what he had to say about about pow­er, pol­i­tics and about the prospect of bring­ing cam­paign finance reform to the nation.

How did the first clean elec­tions reform, in 1996 , come about?

In the late 1980s and ear­ly 1990s, law­mak­ers in Maine would lit­er­al­ly be hand­ed checks by spe­cial inter­est lob­by­ists as they would walk into the cham­ber. And there was a series of dif­fer­ent sto­ries about how lax reg­u­la­tions affect­ed people’s lives, includ­ing one about a tired truck­er who careened, after work­ing a long shift and falling asleep, into a 17-year-old girl in a car. Reg­u­la­tions were pret­ty lax for truck­ers. And that inci­dent was pret­ty explosive.

The same kind of thing was going on with our nat­ur­al resources. So a group of dif­fer­ent folks from the envi­ron­men­tal sec­tor, labor, Repub­li­cans who were con­cerned about crony cap­i­tal­ism, and reli­gious lead­ers and groups came togeth­er to say we have to be able to do some­thing about this. And a few of them basi­cal­ly dreamt up the [Maine] Clean Elec­tions Act on the back of a nap­kin. And they formed a coali­tion, Maine Vot­ers for Clean Elec­tions, and start­ed to per­fect the ini­tia­tive. They col­lect­ed the sig­na­tures in 1995, with more than 1,000 vol­un­teers across the state, and in 1996, vot­ers went to the polls and passed the Maine Clean Elec­tions Act by more than 10 points. The law took four years to put into effect, so we had our first can­di­dates run­ning under the clean elec­tions pro­gram in 2000.

Does the out­side mon­ey flood­ing into elec­tions as a result of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed swamp these state-lev­el reforms?

There are lim­it­ed things we can do to stuff Cit­i­zens Unit­ed back in the box, but one of the pil­lars that the court has con­stant­ly stood up for, so far, is dis­clo­sure. So, along with the changes to clean elec­tions and how that works, we includ­ed a pro­vi­sion [in the 2015 reform] that every inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture in the state, from leg­isla­tive to guber­na­to­r­i­al races, must list its top three fun­ders in the ad. That gives vot­ers a bet­ter idea of who’s pay­ing for these out­side ads, and we think that’s a good thing.

You can’t affect the amount of mon­ey com­ing in, but you can at least shine some light on it?

Right. The oth­er thing that was start­ing to hap­pen in Maine, before our ini­tia­tive, was that out­side groups would come in and evade our dis­clo­sure laws by fil­ing late or not fil­ing at all. And the fines were so minus­cule that some groups called them just the cost of doing busi­ness. They would just inten­tion­al­ly evade fil­ing the reports. The largest fine ever levied by the state was in 2009, when Maine was going to vote on same-sex mar­riage. And a group decid­ed not to file a report on where $2 mil­lion had come from. Their fine was $50,000. That’s 2.5 per­cent. So, we’ve increased the penal­ty to 100 per­cent of the expen­di­ture in the most egre­gious cas­es. If you’re going to come into Maine and spend $2 mil­lion to influ­ence our pol­i­tics, and not dis­close the source, you’re going to pay anoth­er $2 mil­lion for the prob­lems you’ve cre­at­ed. Those were the three pil­lars of the 2015 ini­tia­tive: strength­ened clean elec­tions, increas­ing dis­clo­sure of who’s con­tribut­ing to cam­paigns, and increased fines and penal­ties for vio­lat­ing our laws.

Does Maine’s expe­ri­ence have much rel­e­vance for the broad­er push to pass cam­paign finance reform and over­turn Cit­i­zens Unit­ed?

What we’re fac­ing is a grow­ing cri­sis in con­fi­dence that our insti­tu­tions can real­ly ben­e­fit us all, that they work for all of us. Peo­ple feel like the deck is stacked against them. And there’s a lot of cyn­i­cism out there. But what we’ve found, here in Maine, is that when you can con­nect with peo­ple about the issues that they care about — tax­a­tion, health care, the envi­ron­ment, reduc­ing gov­ern­ment waste — and you ask them what the prob­lem is, they’ll say that they don’t think their gov­ern­ment works for them. And there’s a lot of evi­dence that shows they’re kind of right.

But not entire­ly. And the way we turn that cyn­i­cism, and that apa­thy, about our elec­tions and gov­ern­ment around, is by show­ing peo­ple that if we stand up through col­lec­tive action, we actu­al­ly can push back against the spe­cial inter­ests. That we still have our vote. And that when we come togeth­er, we can have the more fair, just and equi­table soci­ety that we want. I think every one of these efforts that wins, despite com­ing up against big mon­ey and spe­cial inter­ests, breaks through that cyn­i­cism a lit­tle bit more. Peo­ple ask me, ​“What’s your num­ber one obsta­cle? Is it Cit­i­zens Unit­ed?” I say, ​“No, it’s our inabil­i­ty to believe in our­selves. Cyn­i­cism is the No. 1 obsta­cle.” But if you can get beyond that and break it down, almost any­thing is pos­si­ble. Peo­ple want what Maine has, and they deserve it. We deserve to have a gov­ern­ment that works for us.

What are your pri­or­i­ties now?

I like to say that democ­ra­cy isn’t a noun; it’s a verb. It’s some­thing we have to con­stant­ly do. And the sec­ond we’re not vig­i­lant in push­ing for what’s right, that’s when we lose democ­ra­cy. So, we have some fund­ing bat­tles that we have to fight around full fund­ing of clean elec­tions. And Maine just passed an impor­tant law around ranked-choice vot­ing, so there’s more work to do there. And, on the longer hori­zon, I think … no one is say­ing that there’s too lit­tle mon­ey in pol­i­tics, and Con­gress is get­ting too much done. So, we need a fed­er­al sys­tem of pub­lic financ­ing that works for all of us, and isn’t bought and paid for by the high­est bidder.