West Virginia's Clean Election Law - Let's Do the Right Thing and Return Honor to the Process

Maine state representative Boyd Marley visited us Feb. 2-3 as a guest of the WV Clean Elections Coalition.

Mr. Marley was elected in 2000 under the Maine Clean Elections Act. He was invited to come to West Virginia and tell our legislators how the Maine act works in actual practice. (OVEC arranged and paid for his visit.)

During our press conference with Marley, Secretary of State Joe Manchin said 66 percent of Maine voters voted in their 2000 election cycle, in sharp and dismal contrast with West Virginia’s record of around 40 percent.

Marley said a "significant majority" (around 60 percent) of Maine candidates supported the Clean Elections Process, "and said they would use it again."

As an ambassador for clean, publicly funded elections, State Rep. Marley explains to an attentive audience that 77 percent of Maine's state Senate and 55 percent of the state Representatives are Clean Elections legislators after the 2002 election. Attendees at the public reception learned all about this creative, voluntary system for financing elections.

One of the main benefits was candidates’ increased creativity in getting out to meet the public and raising the necessary "seed money" and "qualifying contributions." For example, he said he does not refer any more to "Fund Raising" but instead uses the term "Friend Raising" to describe the process of obtaining seed money and qualifying contributions from his constituents and supporters.

During his visit, Marley met with House Speaker Robert Kiss and spoke to a good number of persons at a public reception at the University of Charleston.

Marley also met with the entire Senate Judiciary committee and the Elections Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. He was featured at a press conference at the Secretary of State’s office and was interviewed on the local PBS news show "Your Legislature Today."

During his visit with the House Elections Sub-Committee he said, "There’s honor in public service. This law puts honor back into public service. We’re trying to make the election process transparent." One of his main points was the success of the Maine law in increasing public participation in elections.

Linda Mallet, Gary Zuckett and Maine state representative Boyd Marley discuss the success of Clean Elections in Maine and the West Virginia Clean Elections Act at a public reception at the University of Charleston. photos by Janet Fout

Marley said, "This law severs the perception that money buys votes" and "puts integrity back into the process" while it "brings it down to the grass roots level."

Question: Are the terms "honor," "integrity," "grass roots level" and "transparent election process" so foreign to our understanding of election campaign finance, so destructive of our "normal" and "usual" procedures that the change the Clean Elections Bill will bring to our election process is so utterly unthinkable and impossible to enact?

Can it possibly be that we prefer our usual way of

doing business and electing our legislative representatives even though the result is 40 percent voter participation and a prevalent cynical public perception that, yes indeed, "money buys votes."

Why would any sincere person freely choose to seek public office knowing that big money has twisted and perverted our elections to the point that the entire process is generally viewed by citizens as a cynical, hypercritical and shallow process?

The answer seems to be that those people who would favor our current profoundly flawed system, favor it because, and only because, they profit greatly from it, and therefore resist changing it.

Also see: Citizens for Clean Elections reception and discussion, "Clean Elections in Maine"