THE COMMITTEE TO REFORM DEMOCRACY IN CALIFORNIA

Committee to Reform Democracy in California

Alexius R. Wierbinski

2437 Piedmont Avenue, #202

Berkeley, Ca, 94704

CommitteeforDemocracy@cwnet.com

July Fifth, 2006 UPDATE:

The Committee has written an initiative to prohibit all political contributions, except from voters qualified and registered to vote in the election they contribute to.

The Initiative was submitted to the Office of the Legislative Counsel on June 15, 2006.

The State’s attorney was overwhelmed with work relating to the June election, and as our initiative was arriving impossibly late to realistically collect the required signatures within the legal time requirements for the November General Election, the initiative was given low priority and was to be analyzed in late July. It was already apparent to us that the best use of the initiative this year was going to be promotional, as these time elements had already precluded the initiative from signature collection and inclusion on this year’s ballot. The finished initiative will provide us with an excellent platform to spread the idea of democracy, get the word out, build our base of supporters, and focus the interest into an organization to make these reforms happen in the next election cycle.

The situation has changed slightly, in that the Office of the Legislative Analyst has now given our initiative top priority. We will receive our first legal opinions around July 5^th, 2006. More information will be forthcoming as the situation develops.

Preliminary, informal conversations with the LAO attorney indicated there might be some language and Constitutional issues in the initiative that need to be addressed. Previous Supreme Court decisions, and the most recent one prohibiting spending limits in political campaigns may require close scrutiny of, and some alterations to, sections of the initiative which;

1. Effectively eliminates small contributor committees. The language in the initiative may not adequately define its goal, which is to limit special interest financial influences while preserving and protecting the rights to freely associate and express political speech. 85302. (a)(b)(c).

2. Disqualify non-voters from contributing to parties, which then distribute those funds to candidates the contributors could not vote for. 85303. (a).

3. Limits party financial support of candidates to 30% of total collected from local voters. This part of the initiative is unique in that it seeks to reposition the local party voter as the predominate force in selecting local candidates. 85303. (b).

4. The personal political rights of a lobbyist to contribute to elections they are qualified and registered to vote in may have to be defined. 85702.

These do not seem to be major hurdles, and are part of refining the initiative to better achieve its goal of returning our democracy to our voters, as well as insulating it from court challenges.

For a copy of the draft initiative, please email us at the above address.

More updates will be forthcoming as the process continues…..

AlexWierbinski@committeefordemocracy.org