Clean Elections
A clean election is a system of taxpayer-financed political campaigns. Candidates that qualify by collecting a prescribed number of signatures and $5 contributions from registered voters in their district can agree to not raise or spend any private money during the primary and general elections. Instead, a set amount of funding for the candidate's campaign is provided from the state budget. If the candidate is outspent by an opponent running a privately funded campaign, the state will provide more funding to the "clean" candidate in order to match the amount spent by the opponent, up to some multiple of the original funding.
Clean elections have been implemented in Maine and Arizona on a statewide level, as well as in Portland, Oregon on the municipal level, and elsewhere. Proponents of clean elections, including those involved in Clean Elections Rhode Island, believe that Clean Elections result in increased voter turnout, political transparency, and diversity of candidates, including fuller representation of women and minorities.
Read more about this topic: Clean Elections Rhode Island
Famous quotes containing the words clean and/or elections:
“She, O, she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea
Hath drops too few to wash her clean again
And salt too little which may season give
To her foul tainted flesh!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)