The Vermont clean election law offers a public financing option to candidates running for governor and lieutenant governor in the year 2000, and commissions a study to consider extending the option to other state offices after the 2000 elections. The legislation provided a fixed amount of Clean Money to qualifying gubernatorial candidates, and set a $300,000 spending limit for all candidates running for governor. However, in 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court deemed Vermont’s mandatory spending limits on state and local candidates as unconstitutional, stating it was a direct challenge to 1976 Buckley v. Valeo.
More:
- Office of Vermont Secretary of State’s Election and Campaign Finance Division
- Full Text of Vermont Act 64 (1998): AN ACT RELATING TO PUBLIC FINANCING OF ELECTION CAMPAIGNS, DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS AND LIMITS ON CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS AND EXPENDITURES
- Vermont Public Interest Research Group’s Campaign Finance Reform Page
- National Voting Rights Institute
- Project Vote Smart
- State PIRGs’ Democracy Campaigns
- The Reform Institute for Campaign and Election Issues
- Issues and Legal Precedent in State Campaign Finance Reform – Reclaim Democracy, November 2002
- Primer on the current rules governing campaign finance at the federal and state levels
- Public Citizen’s Campaign Finance Reform and Governmental Ethics Program
- Campaign Finance Information Center – a resource provided by the Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.
- Opensecrets.org – tracking money in politics by the Center for Responsive Politics
- Plugging In the Public: A Model for Campaign Finance Disclosure – by Elizabeth Hedlund and Lisa Rosenberg, 1996
- Federal Election Commission’s Campaign Finance Law Resources