There is a clear need for a new campaign financing system.\u00a0 Under New York State\u2019s current campaign financing system, a small number of big contributors dominate the system and have an outsized influence over policymaking.\u00a0 As a result, seemingly endless campaign finance \u201cpay-to-play\u201d controversies and scandals have occurred over the decades.\u00a0 Reformers, academics, blue-ribbon commissions, and others have consistently advanced plans that would shift that paradigm to a system to fund runs for state government offices that relies on a large number of small contributors, thus reducing the corruption risk and engaging more voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, after decades of reports and hand\nwringing, as part of the budget earlier this year Governor Cuomo and the state\nLegislature agreed to create the commission to work out the final details to\ninstitute a voluntary system of public financing in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, nearly five<\/em> months after it\nwas established in law, that state commission held its first<\/em> meeting. The\ncommission is charged with creating this new system by December first of this\nyear, about three months from now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why did it take so long to get moving? The governor and the legislative leaders took\nmonths to make their legally required appointments. Months of foot-dragging by the leaders has\nleft the commission will precious little time to meet the deadline of December\n1st<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, things are never as they seem in\nAlbany. Almost immediately, the governor\nand others have argued that an additional mandate of the commission is to\ndetermine whether \u201cfusion\u201d voting would continue to be allowed as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFusion\u201d voting is a system in which\ncandidates for elective office can run on multiple political party lines and\nthen aggregate total of votes of these lines to determine the total number of\nvotes for a particular candidate. Thus,\nfor example, a candidate running on the Republican and Conservative party lines\nwould be allowed to total the number of votes \u2013 or \u201cfuse\u201d them \u2013 in order to\ndetermine if they won an election. In\nthe vast majority of states, this practice is not allowed; in those states each\nparty line is considered a separate vote and thus the total votes are not\naggregated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n New York is among the small number of states\nin which \u201cfusion\u201d is allowed and there has been a decades-long debate over\nwhether this is a good idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But there is nothing<\/em> in the law creating the public financing commission that\nsays they must consider fusion voting. \nThe word \u201cfusion\u201d is nowhere to be found. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, in order to ensure that it was clear\nthat the commission\u2019s mandate was to be narrowly focused on the issue of\ncreating a system of public financing, no more and no less, there was a\ndiscussion on the state Senate floor while the Senators were voting on the plan\nto establish the commission. During that\ndiscussion, the chair of the Senate Elections Committee unequivocally stated\nthat the charge of the commission was limited to the specific changes needed to\nestablish public financing \u2013 nothing more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why are there reports inaccurately stating\nthat the commission must consider \u201cfusion\u201d voting? It\u2019s an effort by those wishing to end fusion\nvoting to create enough \u201cbuzz\u201d around the issue that their interests become a\nreality. And so far, it\u2019s working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Media reports on the first meeting of the\ncommission stated that it must address fusion voting even though there is no\nsuch mandate in the law and there was no debate on the issue during the group\u2019s\nfirst meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In politics, advocates can create a public\nperspective so strong that it can become a reality, as long as they stick with\nit and push their views over and over. \nAnd as long as prominent leaders, in this case the governor, embrace\nthat view, they can succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether fusion voting is a good idea should\nbe left for another day. The commission\nhas only three months to put together a plan for public financing \u2013 a mandate\nclearly articulated in state law. \nDithering over unrelated issues will only cause a major distraction of\nthe important work at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New Yorkers should expect these commissioners\nto do their job and not get pushed and pulled by invisible demands. They must focus on a mountain of important\ndecisions \u2013 staffing, setting rules for decision-making, holding public\nhearings, consulting with experts, and developing a voluntary system of public\nfinancing that will have the force of law by this December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The commission has a lot to do and precious little\ntime to do it. The time crunch is not their\nfault, that failure lies with the governor and the legislative leaders. However, New Yorkers must hope that the\ncommission does not compound the leaders\u2019 error by focusing valuable time on\nissues outside the scope of their mandate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a clear need for a new campaign financing system.\u00a0 Under New York State\u2019s current campaign financing system, a small number of big contributors dominate the system and have an outsized influence over policymaking.\u00a0 As a result, seemingly endless campaign finance \u201cpay-to-play\u201d controversies and scandals have occurred over the decades.\u00a0 Reformers, academics, blue-ribbon commissions, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2292,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291\/revisions\/2292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}