It is a policy initially instituted after Nixon for candidates to opt into publicly funded presidential campaigns via optional donations from tax returns.
It is an attempt to move toward a one voice, one vote democracy, and remove undue corporate and private entity dominance.
Jurisdictions such as United Kingdom, Norway, India, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, and Sweden have considered legislation that would create publicly funded elections.
[1] Methods of publicly funded election legislation have been adopted in Colorado, Maine, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Arizona, North Carolina, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Massachusetts.
Portions of Vermont system for publicly funding elections were found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2006 decision Randall v. Sorrell.
[5] In Arizona, a majority of the state house[citation needed] and both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor ran publicly financed campaigns in 2006.
[citation needed] Massachusetts voters passed a Clean Elections Law by referendum in 1998, providing funding to candidates agreeing to limits and a maximum of $100 contributions.
[9] In 2013, North Carolina repealed its popular "Voter Owned Elections" program of public financing of judicial campaigns.
1826, was introduced in the House, sponsored by John Larson (D-CT), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), and Walter Jones (R-NC).
Some clean elections laws provide a government grant to candidates who agree to limit their spending and private fundraising.
To receive the government campaign grant, "Clean Candidates" must agree to forgo all other fundraising and accept no other private or personal funds.
The decision came as a response to corruption scandals and illegal donations, in the wake of the Operation Car Wash.[26][27] Since then, to cover the lack of private campaign finance, a public electoral fund was set up, to be divided among the parties based on their representation in the National Congress.