Arizona clean election funding upheld
May 24, 2010
Arizona: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on Friday, May 21, upholding Arizona's clean elections system that gives public funding to candidates whose opponents out match them with privately raised campaign donations. The ruling overturns a previous ruling by Judge Roslyn Silver of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona that voided the law. The Clean Elections system was voter approved, but a lawsuit was brought up by a group of candidates, all of whom ran with private money, who claimed that they limited their own campaign spending to avoid triggering additional public contributions to Clean Elections opponents, which limited their freedom of speech and was, therefore, a violation of their first amendment rights. Nick Dranias, representative of the challengers to the law, said that he will immediately appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. There is a limit which states that public candidates who receive funding to match those of their privately funded opponents can only receive up to three times the amount normally allotted to them by public funding. Judge Wallace Tashima of the 9th Circuit Court issued a statement saying that not a single plaintiff cited a case where they refused a donation or did not spend money to avoid an opponent receiving a match.[1][2]
Footnotes
Federal courts:
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals • U.S. District Court: District of Arizona • U.S. Bankruptcy Court: District of Arizona
State courts:
Arizona Supreme Court • Arizona Court of Appeals • Arizona Superior Court • Arizona Justice Courts • Arizona Municipal Courts
State resources:
Courts in Arizona • Arizona judicial elections • Judicial selection in Arizona
