By Bob Richard
May 18, 2007 -- In his blog entry for May 14, Marin Independent Journal columnist Brad Breithaupt writes, "Voters -- not politicians -- should be writing the rules when it comes to regulating political campaigns. Instead of a voters-up approach, the county has chosen a supervisors-down strategy."
He goes on to describe an essentially closed-door process for developing a campaign finance reform proposal, and concludes, "I’d feel a lot better if voters, such as the county Registrar of Voters’ elections committee, were authoring the rules rather than county supervisors who want to stay in office and are now writing the rules they -- and their challengers -- would have to follow."
We thank Breithaupt for bringing this up. The Canadians have come up with a great way for voters to write the rules:
These were at the provincial level (equivalent to the state level in the U.S.). But the idea would scale down to the county level extremely well. Needless to say, potential subjects include ranked voting as well as campaign finance rules.
As an aside, campaign finance reform - as important as it is - would not be within the purview of Marin's Election Advisory Committee, which advises Registrar Elaine Ginnold on election administration.
Last revised May 26, 2007
Debra Bowen to speak at election reform forum on September 15
Election Advisory Committee annual community meeting is June 21
