{"id":429,"date":"2018-01-30T19:51:54","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T19:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/?p=429"},"modified":"2018-01-31T15:06:56","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T15:06:56","slug":"our-secret-supporters-part-ii-the-115th-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/?p=429","title":{"rendered":"Our Secret Supporters, Part II, the 115th Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A\u00a0Review of the Websites of\u00a0the\u00a0<\/b>Co-Sponsors of Legislation<\/b>\u00a0to Create Publicly Funded Elections, Part II, 115th Congress, reviewed January 2018<\/b><\/h3>\n

by Frank Kirkwood<\/p>\n

Legislation to set up publicly funded elections<\/strong> has been introduced in Congress many times over the last 20+ years. \u00a0We should expect real leaders of these politically revolutionary bills to use their websites, their face to the public, to say to their constituents, \u201cLike you, I recognize that our democracy is in trouble.\u00a0 There are solutions to these problems and I am working hard to pass them.\u00a0 Look at what I have done already.\u00a0 I have co-sponsored the bill to\u00a0<\/span>create publicly funded elections<\/span>.<\/i>\u201d \u00a0<\/span>Real leaders would take the opportunity to use their websites to acknowledge the public\u2019s frustration and to educate their constituents about the solutions that are available to the money-in-politics problem and to let the citizens know that their representative is on the forefront of this fight.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In August of 2015<\/strong>, I reviewed the websites of the sponsors and co-sponsors of the two bills to create publicly funded elections in the 114th Congress.\u00a0 I also looked at the websites of the sponsors and co-sponsors of the two resolutions to amend the constitution to fix the\u00a0Citizens United<\/i>\u00a0decision.\u00a0 I looked at both the official congressional website and the campaign website of each of these elected officials. \u00a0You can see that review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In January of 2018<\/strong>, I repeated the review for the 115th Congress but this time I did not look at the Citizens United<\/em> related bills, only at the bills for publicly funded elections: \u00a0HR 20, the Government by the People Act and S 1640, the Fair Elections Now Act. \u00a0I looked for statements on their websites about these public funding of elections bills or, more generally, about their support of publicly funded elections.<\/p>\n

Here is what I found:<\/p>\n

Publicly Funded Elections<\/b><\/h2>\n

Do members of Congress\u00a0who say (by their co-sponsorship) that they support\u00a0publicly funded elections<\/b>\u00a0demonstrate their support on their websites? \u00a0The official congressional websites and the campaign websites of the sponsors\/co-sponsors of the\u00a0Fair Elections Now Act<\/b>\u00a0(in the Senate) and the\u00a0Government for the People Act<\/b>\u00a0(in the House) were reviewed. \u00a0To date, there are 27 sponsors\/cosponsors for S 1640 in the Senate and 158 sponsors\/cosponsors of HR 20 in the House.<\/p>\n

RESULTS FOR ALL SPONSORS\/CO-SPONSORS:<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Total (both houses) sponsors\/co-sponsors = \u00a0185<\/p>\n

Total sponsors\/co-sponsors (both houses) with a statement about these bills or about publicly funded elections on either<\/strong> their official or campaign websites = \u00a032 sponsors\/co-sponsors or 17% of\u00a0sponsors\/co-sponsors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Total sponsors\/co-sponsors (both houses) with a statement about these bills or about publicly funded elections on both<\/strong> their official and campaign websites = \u00a06 sponsors\/co-sponsors or 3% of\u00a0sponsors\/co-sponsors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Or stated another way –<\/b><\/p>\n

83%\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0of all sponsors\/co-sponsors<\/b>\u00a0of bills to create publicly funded elections\u00a0do not<\/b>\u00a0mention their support for these bills or their support for publicly funded elections at all<\/strong> on\u00a0either<\/b>\u00a0their official or campaign websites.<\/p>\n

Look\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0for details of US House of Representatives co-sponsor website review.<\/span><\/p>\n

Look\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0for details of US Senate co-sponsor website review.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Review of the Websites of the Co-Sponsors of Legislation to Create Publicly Funded Elections, Part II, 115th Congress, reviewed January 2018 by Frank Kirkwood Legislation to set up publicly funded elections has been introduced in Congress many times over the last 20+ years.  We should expect real leaders of these politically revolutionary bills to use their websites, their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trustworthygovernment.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}