Contact Asheville City Council today to voice your support for publicly financed elections.

Here in Western North Carolina, we now have an opportunity to reclaim our power from the special interests. We have a chance to take a step toward publicly-financed campaigns in Asheville.

At the Tuesday, June 8 Asheville City Council meeting, Council member Cecil Bothwell will offer a resolution in support of local campaign finance reform. If passed by the Council, this resolution will call upon the North Carolina General Assembly to enact legislation that gives larger towns the authority to sponsor a public financing program for their local elections.

Contact Asheville City Council members today!
Whether or not you live within the Asheville city limits, this is a matter of concern for all of us. And it’s important for you to email all of the members of the Asheville City Council expressing your support for the resolution for public financing of local campaigns. You can reach all City Council members at once by sending one message to AshevilleNCCouncil@ashevillenc.gov.

For more information on publicly-financed elections in North Carolina, visit the following websites:

• North Carolina Common Cause: http://www.commoncause.org/nc
• Democracy North Carolina: http://www.democracy-nc.org
• North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections: http://www.ncvce.org

Here are nine excellent reasons to support publicly-financed elections in Asheville.

1. Big money can unfairly influence the outcome of our local elections. Wealthy donors, corporations, political action committees and special interest groups with a stake in Asheville City Council decisions can provide their chosen candidates with generous campaign contributions, giving these candidates an unfair advantage.
2. The high cost of running for office deprives us of more diverse leadership. Many aspiring local leaders refuse to run for office because of the rising cost of campaigning for City Council, leaving us with a primarily white, affluent, male, heterosexual Council that is not fully representative of our city’s population.
3. City Council members whose campaigns were publicly financed will be accountable to all the citizens of Asheville. Publicly-financed elections ensure that our elected officials are more accountable to the citizens rather than to special interest groups that provide substantial campaign contributions.
4. Voters are more likely to participate in publicly-financed elections. When voters understand that all qualified candidates have a chance to win and that the election is not rigged in favor of the affluent or those supported by big money, they are more likely to participate.
5. Chapel Hill’s 2009 municipal elections proved it works. Chapel Hill’s Voter Owned Election Program was entirely voluntary, and candidates qualified by raising a sizeable number of small contributions and agreeing to spending and fundraising limits. The two candidates who qualified to receive financial support from the city during the fall 2009 Chapel Hill municipal election cycle each won more votes than any of the non-participating candidates, and the program cost the city less than $1 per citizen.
6. Other North Carolina cities have already voiced their support. Raleigh, Durham, Winston-Salem, Cary, Wilmington and Greenville have already passed resolutions similar to the one that is being offered at the June 8 City Council meeting.
7. Citizens United v. FEC decision creates greater urgency. After the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on Citizens United v. FEC that removed restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates, there is now nothing to keep a corporation, on its own initiative, from spending huge sums of money in an Asheville election to elect a slate of candidates favorable to their interests.
8. Voters from across the political spectrum want special interest money out of our politics. Recent focus groups in Charlotte and Denver for the Campaign for Fair Elections and Public Campaign Action Fund clearly indicated that voters across the political spectrum are angry about the problem of special interest money in our politics and want fair elections in which candidates receive small donations from everyday people.
9. Keep “one person, one vote” a reality. By committing to publicly-financed municipal elections, we help to ensure that “one person, one vote” is not an obsolete expression, but is indeed a reality in our community.