Publicly funded elections
A publicly funded election is an election funded with money collected through income tax donations or taxes as opposed to private or corporate funded campaigns. It is a policy initially instituted after Nixon for candidates to opt into publicly funded presidential campaigns via optional donations from tax returns. It is an attempt to move toward a one voice, one vote democracy, and remove undue corporate and private entity dominance. Jurisdictions such as United Kingdom, Norway, India, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, and Sweden have considered legislation that would create publicly funded elections. United States Methods of publicly funded election legislation have been adopted in Colorado, Maine, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Arizona, North Carolina, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Massachusetts. Court rulings and legality Portions of Vermont system for publicly funding elections were found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2006 decision Randall v. Sorrell. In particular, state supplemental funds for publicly financed candidates whose opponents outspend them were struck down, while full funding of governor and lieutenant governor candidates remained in place. Portions of Connecticut's statute were held unconstitutional in 2009, on the grounds that it unfairly discriminated against third party and independent candidates, but the core program of full funding of constitutional and legislative candidates remained in place. In July 2010 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld portions of the district court's order but allowed the core program to continue. In as part of the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision, U.S. Supreme Court defined money as a form of speech. A number of jurisdictions reacted by modifying existing laws or trying to pass new laws. On June 27, 2011, ruling in the consolidated cases Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett and McComish v. Bennett, the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional the matching-funds provision of the Arizona law. States Comprehensive public funding systems have been in effect in Arizona and Maine since 2000. In Maine, since enactment, approximately three quarters of state legislators have run their campaigns with government funds provided by the state program. In Arizona, a majority of the state house and both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor ran publicly financed campaigns in 2006. There has not yet been a statewide election in Maine in which both the Republican and Democratic candidates were financed through the public financing system. In Massachusetts the system was repealed after a 2002 advisory initiative in which voters voted nearly 2 to 1 against using government funds to pay for political campaigns. In 2008, the California Fair Elections Act (AB583) passed the California Assembly and Senate and was signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because of the ban on publicly funded elections, the law had to be approved by voters in an initiative in June 2010. On June 8, 2010, California voters decided against the measure by 57% to 43%. An earlier Clean Elections ballot initiative that suggested funding elections with a business tax, Proposition 89 was also