Yes on Prop 15!

I can't imagine what has taken me so long to write this endorsement. I have been supporting and highly involved (until now) in pursuing public financing of elections in California for years. This is a no brainer. This initiative creates full funding from a fee imposed on lobbyists to pay for elections for the office of Secretary of State. It also repeals a current ban on local areas creating public financing of elections--in and of itself needed.

The only people opposed are lobbyists, but fortunately they don't have any political clout. It's endorsed by almost every newspaper in the state (which the notable exception of the Sacramento Bee. I'm chalking this major mistake up to the existence of Ginger Rutland on the editorial board, who has never met a campaign finance reform measure that she liked.)

Public financing of elections is different from campaign limits mostly because it works. Instead of trying to restrict the flow of money (you can't, it will flow), you match it with public dollars rendering it unable to buy elections. In states like Arizona, Maine and Connecticut the experiment with public financing of elections has largely been successful. Voters have higher confidence in their elected officials in those states because they owe their election to the people who voted for them, rather than the people who financed their campaign. Well, to put that another way, now they're the same people.

Politicians are freed up from dialing for dollars and actually do their work. Vote for this initiative and click on this link to see how you can help in these last two weeks.