A new group on campus is vowing to take private money out of the election process, making candidates more accessible to their constituents.
Democracy Matters, a national nonpartisan organization that advocates clean elections, is meeting on campus Tuesday at 3 p.m., at Charlie's Cafe in Hayden Library to organize and preserve Arizona's Clean Elections policy, a law that provides candidates with public funds on the grounds that they do not accept funding from private and special-interest donors.
"Our main issue is the issue of money and politics," said Amira Jessica Diamond, West Coast director of Democracy Matters. "We're really looking at the fact that in our current political system, money buys power."
Clean Elections laws were approved in Arizona and Maine in the late 1990s.
Diamond said politicians currently spend about 70 percent of their time "dialing for dollars."
"Politicians are just as victimized as the next person," Diamond said.
Clean Elections creates more responsive politicians, she said.
"It's freeing politicians from the burden of fund raising and letting them do their jobs," she said.
The laws increase the opportunity for average citizens, especially women and minorities to run for office, said Shanna Sandler, an ASU political science senior and campus coordinator for Democracy Matters.
"By running clean elections, we're putting the power back in the hands of the people and taking away from large corporations," she said.
Diamond said it is important for chapters to be opened on Arizona's college campuses because the nation is focused on Arizona and the success of the Clean Elections act.
"There is expected attack on [Arizona's] system in the next couple of years," she said.
Gov. Janet Napolitano, Rep. Meg Burton Cahill, D-Tempe, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have all said they support Clean Elections.
McCain sponsored campaign finance reform legislation with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., which included a ban on soft money and restrictions on campaign ads run by corporations and unions.
Diamond will also start chapters of Democracy Matters at UA and NAU.
There are 75 Democracy Matters groups on campuses nationwide, including Harvard, Princeton and the University of California at Berkeley.
Adonal Foyle, a National Basketball Association player for the Golden State Warriors, founded Democracy Matters in 2001 to give college students a voice in the pro-democracy movement.
"Students have historically always been the ones who have made a huge difference in social movements and have always been the ones that create lasting change in our society," Diamond said.
Eric Lind, a religious studies and philosophy senior, said Democracy Matters is important because not many students know about the Clean Elections legislation.
"It informs the student body on the importance of separating corporate influence from the election process," he said. "If corporations have the possibility to donate money, then it undermines the democratic process."
Reach the reporter at shaina.levee@asu.edu.
