A Message from Voter-owned Iowa
It’s hard to believe that summer is almost half over and before we know it the fall will be upon us and the airwaves will be saturated with campaign ads. During this election season, it will be more important than ever for people to be aware of the huge, disastrous amounts of money that special interests are doling out to buy our next round of public servants.
As many of you know, Voter-Owned Elections is a statewide campaign of Iowa CCI and several Iowa coalition groups to eliminate Big Money's influence on politics and return democracy back to the people. Voter-Owned Elections is a voluntary system for state elections which provides qualifying candidates - those who collect a set amount of signatures and $5 donations from within their district - with a set amount of money from a public source if they promise to refuse money from all other sources.
Voter-Owned Elections is known as "Clean Elections" in several states. The Voter-Owned System is voluntary, nonpartisan, and offers candidates who choose to run "voter-owned" a limited but competitive amount of money that frees them from the money chase. In Arizona, where this law was passed in 1998, Big Money interests are waging a battle to take it away. They are using deceptive tactics to get a constitutional amendment banning the law on the ballot this fall. To learn more about Arizona’s effort, visit www.azkeepitclean.org.
This has been a year of historic firsts on the national level with both John Kerry and George W. Bush setting new fundraising records. By June 20th, Kerry had raised a total of $180 million and Bush $205 million. Both have more than doubled what Bush and Al Gore spent in the run-up to the conventions four years ago. Here in Iowa, Special Interests continue to flex their political muscle through their PACs, with the Des Moines Register citing over $100,000 of PAC money from gambling interests flowing to legislators before the 2004 session began.
CCI members have not sat by silently. We had letters to the editor published all over the state. Feel free to write your own letter on the importance of freeing our elected officials from the money chase.
Letters to the editor are only one way that CCI members have been working to get the word out. Soon we will begin running ads on the Des Moines Register website as well as in two Des Moines weekly papers, Pointblank and Cityview. These ads will encourage people to visit the voter-owned website and become involved with the movement to return democracy to the hands of the people. Additionally, we are working to make our website a better resource for members and others and to provide a forum for feedback and interaction, entitled News and Views.
On June 26th, over 30 CCI members participated in the Voter-Owned Elections workshop at CCI’s annual convention. The workshop kicked off with a fun and interactive exercise where two candidates ran for office and members could see how the “Voter-Owned” candidate represents true democracy! Members then broke into small groups and brainstormed the selling points of Voter-Owned Elections and also possible roadblocks for the campaign. Participants learned how voter-owned elections could work in Iowa, and we hope to use this workshop as a template for educating people all over Iowa about the voter-owned system.
Another resource that will soon be available on our website is a letter we drafted that can be sent to politicians who ask you for money. This letter explains the merits of the voter-owned system, including freeing candidates from the money chase. What better time to build support for voter-owned elections among candidates than in the thick of fundraising headaches? Even if you choose to donate to a campaign, enclosing this letter is a great way of getting the word out!
The most important resource our campaign has is you, our members. Since legislators are the only ones who can revamp the system, it will take a groundswell of grassroots support to get this done. We need your help! Hold house or community meetings for friends and neighbors to educate them on Voter-Owned elections. Our staff is happy to help you put together a meeting in your area and to help you run it. Please feel free to contact us at 515-282-0484, or shoot us an email at iowacci@iowacci.org!
It is imperative that we continue to talk to Iowans across the state, to educate them on what is at stake, and to empower them with the idea that they are the rightful owners of our democratic system, and they have the right to reclaim it.
Sincerely,
Kerri, Carissa and Tyler
Voter-Owned Iowa
www.voterownediowa.org
Sign The Voter-owned Iowa Petition
Go here to sign the Voter-owned Iowa petition online.
