I am proud to be a Democrat. I contribute to other Democrats who run for office. I do not contribute to Republicans as a rule. I don’t contribute to people who have views that are not in line with mine or whom I do not support. However, under the so-called Clean Elections Law, I am now forced to contribute through my tax dollars to those candidates.

That is the philosophical problem that I have with this law. Regardless of whether we support the personal or political philosophies of a candidate, our tax dollars will go to support that candidate. If you are pro-life, your tax dollars will go toward funding the candidacy of a pro-choice candidate, and vice versa. Whether you want to or not; whether you are politically supportive of that candidate’s position or whether their position is directly contrary to yours; the Clean Elections Law forces you to monetarily support their candidacy.

We are not talking about a small sum of money here. If a candidate for the House of Representatives can raise $1,000 from friends and family ($5 from 200 people), then that candidate is eligible for up to $54,000 in an election cycle! The price tag for this law runs to tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars. I don’t think that this is right, nor do I think that this is what the public was thinking when they voted for this referendum. As a matter of fact, there was a poll conducted recently by the McCormack Institute at the University of Massachusetts that indicated a great deal of confusion over what the public thought was going to be accomplished by this question.

This law also seems to strike at the very heart of what we expect from a democracy: freedom to support those we wish to support, and freedom from being forced to contribute to candidates we do not support.

This is the first of three reasons that I did not support the Clean Elections Law when it was on the ballot. This is the philosophical problem. The second reason concerns the technical flaws in the law. The third reason has to do with what I and others expect will happen to the political process.

There are many technical problems with this bill. I have submitted to the Legislature’s Election Laws Committee 11 single-spaced typewritten pages of technical problems that I think need to be addressed with the public finance bill. Let me mention just a few here.

This law is unfair to people who live far away from the State House. Any representatives who maintain a district office must, under the current system, raise money from their campaign to pay for this expense. That alone prohibits them from opting in to the clean elections system. If a representative raises and spends $25,000 to run his or her district office, or if they spend money on travel, phones, and other expenses that are incurred in the course of their work, then the challenger who opts in to public funds will be given funds to match that raised and spent by the incumbent. In other words, if a sitting representative raises and spends $50,000 to run the office for the two-year term, the challenger is given $50,000 in matching funds. In order to compete with this public funding, the incumbent must then go out and raise an additional $50,000 in order to compete with the publicly funded challenger! This flies in the face of the stated goal of cutting down the amount of money needed to run for office. This needs to be changed. The threshold amount of money needing to be raised is far too low, opening the door to all sorts of abuse. First, if one can raise $1,000 in order to get up to $54,000 in public funds every two years, and if one can hire a campaign manager as an acceptable expenditure of those funds, then will we have people who raise funds just to give a cousin or friend a job every other year? Will several candidates raise money for each other so that they can “hire” each other?

Some fringe groups have talked about placing several candidates in a race so that a few can attack the incumbent while one takes the high road, rising above the negativity. Will this happen? Who knows, but people are already talking of such things. The reply has been that this could happen and does happen now. That is true, but it becomes far easier for this to happen when you only have to raise $1,000 to enter a race and receive thousands in public dollars. I would hope that we could raise this threshold so that we can limit elections to the serious candidates rather than fringe candidates or people who enter races for the money.

There are other technical issues that need to be looked at as well. The law imposes a lot of new certifications for municipal clerks. It also increases the number of campaign finance reports from hundreds to thousands of reports that have to be certified in a timely manner. It sets unrealistic timetables for the state to send money back to qualified publicly financed candidates. All of these issues and many more must be resolved prior to the implementation of the act.

Third, there are the expectations set by the new law. What did the proponents hope to accomplish? When I talk to constituents about campaign finance, I was given examples of abuse in Congress, not in the state Legislature. People used examples of Gov. Cellucci spending close to $7 million dollars in the governor’s race. My constituents talked about soft money. They talked about then-candidate John McCain’s camoaign-finance reform ideas. None of this is going to change under the so-called Clean Elections law.

It was suggested that this law will result in more candidates running for office. I would suggest that it will result in more single-issue candidates. Not happy with education? Run on the anti-MCAS platform–we will pay for it. Do we need slates of single-issue candidates running on taxpayers’ money? I don’t believe so. If the proponents want more grass-roots participation in the process, they are not going to achieve it. Giving candidates money for ads will allow more candidates to bypass the grass-roots participation–including the coffees and house meetings where money is raised–for which the proponents are advocating. Filling up the ballot with single issue and fringe candidates, financed with tax dollars, is not going to increase participation in the process.

Recognizing that the Clean Elections Law, as currently written, is deeply flawed, the Legislature voted to delay the date by which elected officials have to opt in or out of the public financing system from December 6 to March 31 of next year. I hope my colleagues will take this opportunity to re-evaluate and revise this misguided law.

We need a serious discussion about what is wrong with our political system and why more voters are not engaged in the process. Unfortunately, rather than have that discussion, we seek simple solutions such as term limits and public financing. These “answers” only mask the problems; they do not solve them.

Daniel E. Bosley is a Democratic state representative from North Adams and House chairman of the Government Regulations Committee.