Elections in the United States have become dominated by big money.  Wealthy donors are able to contribute large sums of hard and soft money that far outweighs the modest contribution of the average citizen.  With 90% of elections being won by the candidate who spends the most money (according to a study of the 2002 Congressional primaries by U.S. PIRG), elections are being decided by an elite few, rather than by the majority. 

Here at the High Road Service Center, ALICE offers several policy suggetions for returning electoral power to the average citizen.   One of the most promising campaign finance reforms are the clean elections laws -- passed in a handful of states -- which allow candidates for office the option of having their campaigns be publicly funded.  We have devoted an entire policy section to these public financing laws alone.  

In this section, we offer a variety of other campaign finance reforms that state and local governments can enact, that have been successful in liberal and conservative states alike.

The materials in this section come in large part from  Public Campaign, U.S. PIRG,  Public Citizen,  the New Rules Project at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance,  The Brookings Institution,  the National Civic League,  Brennan Center for Justice,  Reclaim Democracy! and  the State PIRGs.  ALICEwould like to thank these groups for mapping out the high road on reforming the state campaign finance system

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