Brennan Center for Justice

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In NYC More People Give, Widening Donor Numbers and Diversity

Since 1989, New York City has had a unique system for financing municipal elections. A city candidate can receive $6 in public matching funds for every $1 raised, up to $175 per donor. The Brennan Center is now leading efforts to adopt this system statewide. A new analysis by the Brennan Center and the Campaign Finance Institute offers powerful evidence that the city's small donor matching fund program increases both the number and diversity of campaign donors. The study, Donor Diversity through Public Matching Funds, found that almost everyone in the city lived within a city block of someone who contributed to a City Council candidate in 2009. The same was not true for State Assembly candidates, who do not have a small donor matching program, and actually have the lowest donor participation rate in the country. The study was written by Elisabeth Genn and Sundeep Iyer of the Brennan Center, and Michael J. Malbin and Brendan Glavin from the Campaign Finance Institute.

States Should Not Misappropriate Foreclosure Funds

When the government and big banks finalized a $25 billion settlement over home foreclosure abuses, $2.5 billion was alloted to states for foreclosure-prevention efforts. But 15 states have diverted some or all of this money for other purposes. Arizona, for example, has swept $50 million from its share of the settlement into the state’s general fund. Legislators insist that the state needs to balance the budget. Yet, as the Brennan Center’s Mark Ladov and Meghna Philip wrote in The Arizona Republic, the state “posted the highest foreclosure rate in the nation in March, with an astonishing one out of every 300 housing units receiving a foreclosure notice.” Moreover, foreclosure prevention is cost-effective, saving governments and taxpayers as much as $80,000 for each home saved. “Instead of misappropriating settlement funds, Arizona should … invest in foreclosure prevention,” Ladov and Philip wrote.

Brennan Center Wins Vote Count Fight

Before the 2010 election, the Brennan Center sued New York state and city election officials, claiming that the State’s new voting machines did not provide understandable "overvote" warnings to voters who accidentally marked more than one candidate. Voting machines deem a contest “overvoted” if they find that too many candidates for a particular contest were chosen. In such cases, no vote is recorded unless the voter corrects his or her ballot. In the suit, the Brennan Center contended that voters saw a confusing message when machines detected "overvotes," and voters did not have sufficient opportunity to correct their ballots. Despite the Brennan Center’s objection, the confusing message was used in the 2010 election. In some districts, as many as 40 percent of the votes cast did not count because of  “overvotes.” Tests later found the machines misread ballots and cast “phantom votes” when they overheated. “That could mean that if the person hasn’t voted in a contest, they could have a vote attributed to them that they never intended to cast,” the Brennan Center’s Lawrence Norden told WNYC. In settling the lawsuit, New York agreed to reprogram the machines to explain clearly to voters when a machine cannot read a vote, and to provide voters the opportunity to correct their ballot.

Visit the Brennan Center’s Election 2012 Page

This year’s election is beset by challenges to the integrity of our democracy. Millions of eligible Americans may find it harder to vote because of new restrictions, while at the same time super PACs spend tens of millions of dollars influencing candidates. The Election 2012 page is your guide to plausible, concrete proposals to cure them. Democracy is too important for mere reportage. What is needed are practical solutions. The Election 2012 page has them. Visit our Election 2012 page to see how we are advancing a new generation of reforms to modernize voter registration and change campaign finance laws. Also, sign up for our voting newsletter.