The Telescoping Effects of Public Campaign Funding: Evaluating the Impact of Clean Elections in Arizona, Maine, and New Jersey

Supporters of public campaign funding say it democratizes the election process; detractors say it fails to meet its intended goals and, in fact, has unexpected negative results. Examining data from Arizona and Maine, which have full public funding, and from New Jersey's "Clean Election" pilot program, has enabled us to determine empirically if critics are correct. We conclude that neither advocates of Clean Elections nor its detractors are completely accurate. Rather, public campaign funding enhances trends that already existed where it was implemented without sparking new ones.