Publicly funded elections starting in Hawaii despite potential legal questions

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-campaign-finance-hawaii,0,5001793.story

HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii is moving forward with its test run of publicly funded political campaigns this election year, despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling against a similar setup in Arizona.

The state's experiment with publicly funded elections starts with this fall's Hawaii County Council contest, where 16 candidates applied to participate in the program before last Monday's deadline, according to the Campaign Spending Commission.

The June 8 Supreme Court decision doesn't affect states outside Arizona, but the ruling could lead to future legal challenges of public funding in states including Hawaii, Connecticut and Maine. No litigation appeared to be pending in Hawaii as of Friday.

Advocates including Hawaii County Council candidate Barbara Lively said publicly paid elections help take the corrupting influence of money out of political campaigns. Lively anticipates receiving more than $23,000 in government money to seek her first run for office. She is vying for the Puna district seat.

"It's trying to weed out the special interests and influence groups," said Lively, who is unemployed but has worked for the county in the past. "It's absurd that offices are bought and paid for with ridiculous sums of money."

Money for the program comes the $4.5 million Hawaii Election Campaign Fund, which is paid into by taxpayers who check a box on their income tax forms to donate $3.


More at the link ---

[jaxx]

1. Who stops the 527's?

[Selatius]

2. It's a step in the right direction but there is a glaring loophole with the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court essentially ruled that corporate entities can spend unlimited amounts of money influencing elections citing the 1st Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech. If Candidate A were a leftist and Candidate B were a rightist, who says corporations cannot chime in and run hundreds of ads on their own attacking Candidate A as being anti-American, a socialist, an extremist, a baby-killer, etc.?

In the end, what advantage would there be if everybody got the same sized check to run a campaign if outside groups like corporations can simply cancel out any benefit to the arrangement simply by flooding the field with their own attack ads?