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The Daily Tar Heel

Edit: Keep elections in the citizen's hands

In a country where the Bill of Rights protects businesses before it protects citizens, the voter-owned election system is a bastion of democratic sanity in a storm of corporate tyranny. The General Assembly should not allow Chapel Hill’s program to sunset this year, but rather pass legislation making the program permanent.

It should also consider allowing other townships across the state to adopt similar systems.

Voter-owned elections are a simple fix to the complicated can of worms the Supreme Court opened in its holdings from Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. With a narrow 5–4 majority, the court held in 2010 that election laws could not limit corporate funding in political broadcasts.

The case struck a big blow to democracy, allowing an unprecedented level of corporate interventionism in American politics.

Voter-owned elections stand in stark contrast to Citizens United. Also called “fair” or “clean” elections, voter-owned elections are exactly that — a way to keep politicians accountable to the constituency they represent — and keep big corporations out of a political system already rotting from corruption.

The program stipulates that candidates for the Chapel Hill Town Council cannot accept donations of more than $20 per person while receiving council funding. Implemented in 2009, the program is the only one of its kind in the state — and solves many of the problems Citizens United has since caused.

Currently, the program is both voluntary and restricted to local elections in Chapel Hill. This makes arguments against the program particularly weak, especially when considering the program’s local support.

And there is simply no fiscal argument for the state legislature — the program does not cost any money to the state, instead drawing funds from the Town Council’s budget.

Statements by state legislators have suggested that the program’s future is in serious doubt, with Republicans representing the opposition to its existence — an opposition that might very well be solely ideological.

Although it is still unclear why exactly the legislature would discontinue Chapel Hill’s program, concern might stem from historical problems with voter-owned election initiatives.

Other states that have pursued similar initiatives have run into trouble with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Councilman Matt Czajkowski, who didn’t participate in the program during his 2009 mayoral campaign, said he opposes the idea of publicly funded elections, referring to the system as a “distraction” from “much more significant issues.”

But Czajkowski lost for a reason. His patronizing comments on the issue illustrate his failure to grasp just how important voter-owned elections are in keeping the power of government in the hands of the people.

Too often, political commentary invokes lofty democratic ideals for subtle shifts in trivial policies.

But this is more than that. Where Citizens United is the artificial sweetener of American politics, voter-owned elections are that spoonful of real sugar that helps the medicine go down.

The N.C. legislature must consider the implications of stopping a program that so surely places political power in the hands of the voters at literally no political or fiscal cost to state government.

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