Maine Voters Hope to Restore their Revolutionary Election System

WASHINGTON — In 1996, Maine became the first state to enact a public financing system for statewide elections, inspiring other places, including Arizona, Connecticut and New York City, to follow suit. This year, Maine hopes to blaze a trail again by becoming the first state to fix the heavy damage visited on its system by multiple Supreme Court decisions.

The system that Maine residents passed in a referendum vote in 1996 provided candidates with a lump sum of public funds if they met a threshold of fundraising in $5 increments from voters in their districts. Candidates were further provided matching funds if their opponent was funding their campaign with their own money, or if an outside group was spending money on the race over a certain amount. Debuting in 2000, the Maine system, known as “clean elections,” worked better and better with each election cycle. By 2008, 85 percent of legislators were running with public funds.

“Maine’s law in ’96 was a landmark,” said David Donnelly, president of the campaign finance reform group Every Voice and the head of the campaign to enact Maine’s 1996 initiative. “It was the first of its kind in the country. People all around the country work to replicate it… The experiment worked — not just the fine details of it, but that you can create a system of small donations.”

The idea was to provide a path for candidates to run even if they didn’t come armed with a network of wealthy donors willing to give $1,000 or $5,000. Passage of the referendum allowed waitresses, teachers, firefighters, convenience store clerks and others to run for office and win. Women benefited especially, running in greater numbers than had been possible before. Thanks to public funding, the state soon had the most blue-collar legislature in the country.

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