Corinne Ramey

Clean Elections Update: If You Missed the Event, See the Why Tuesday? Video

Elections today are riddled with campaign finance problems, as big lobbyists and scandal ridden donors have a disproportionately large influence on the supposedly democratic tradition of voting.

On September 17th, DMI's Marketplace of Ideas event discussed many of these voting issues. The panel featured Dennis Burke, an activist and former director of Arizona Common Cause. While in Arizona, Burke was instrumental in passing the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act, providing voluntary public financing for candidates who run without private campaign contributions.

Jacob Soboroff of Why Tuesday? attended the event and captured his experience in a YouTube video, posted below. The video shows Soboroff attending the DMI event and discussing clean elections and election reform with speaker Dennis Burke, who talks about clean elections using a "the-rat-and-the-cheese" metaphor. "Power finds its way to money and money finds its way to power, and people are constantly putting little baffles between the rat and the cheese," he told Soboroff. "This is our latest attempt to slow down the rat a little bit so that the people have a chance."

If rats and cheese aren't enough to pique your interest in clean election reforms, you should least watch this video for the really catchy music.

Why Tuesday?'s mission, according to their website, is to "advance the job started by the civil rights leaders of the 1960s by sparking a national discussion about voting, and seek out national reforms which will result in an America where voting is seen not just as a right, but as a democratic imperative for all citizens." The organization gets its name by asking the question of why we vote on a day in the middle of the work week. They suggest that many voting traditions and rules haven't changed since the 19th century and need to be updated to increase accountability and transparency of voting in the 21st. To read more about clean elections, check out DMI's liveblog from the event.

Corinne Ramey: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 2:40 PM, Oct 09, 2007 in Democracy | Government Accountability | Governmental Reform | Voting Rights
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