Democrats in the North Carolina Legislature are working hard to spend more money make elections "public financed." They're calling them "voter owned elections" (VOE) -- which couldn't be further from the truth.

These are common ideas from the left. It claims that there will be more participation in elections and that there will be less influence from special interests. States that have implemented these new election rules, however, have found the exact opposite has happened:

Incumbent re-election rates ROSE when public financing was put in place.
More incumbents decide to run for re-election with public financing.
In AZ, from 2002 to 2004, the number of statewide candidates fell from 39 to 7.
40 academic studies have shown that legislators elected under public financing vote exactly the same as legislators who were not.
Public financed elections have the exact same margins of victory as non-public funded.
Voter turnout is completely unaffected.
Public opinion of legislators is unchanged by public financing.

So what, exactly, does public financing do? It increases the power of the incumbent and forces the taxpayer to finance a candidate they dislike. It reduces the choices of the voter. It makes it MORE difficult for an unexperienced candidate to navigate the red tape of the election process. Elected candidates will be LESS responsive to voters -- because they don't need to raise money from them any more.

Public financing is completely and totally wrong on many levels. And those states who have implemented it have shown it will have a detrimental effect on Democracy -- which is why North Carolina Democrats support it.

Posted by: Ogre at 11:04 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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