Does Maryland need stricter campaign finance regulations and ethics rules for public officials?

 

Yes.

 

Skip stronger campaign finance regulations and let's make substantive democratic changes to how Maryland elects its representatives. 

 

Starting with public financing for all elections.  This would severely limit how much could be spent on a campaign, the funding sources, and enable qualified non-millionaires to run for office.  The current notion that viable candidates are those who can raise money shifts the focus from whether the candidate is actually qualified to do the job. 

 

Furthermore, we need to add rank choice voting, term limits, and limit elections to 8 weeks for the primary and an additional 8 weeks for the general election. 

 

All of these measures will level the playing field for true representation of all people in our elections.

 

We also need to fundamentally rethink Maryland Ethics rules and how they apply to elected officials. 

 

We the People own our government, we pay for the salaries of our elected officials, and our vote is essentially the job performance report on each elected official. So, it's common sense that substantiated charges and guilty findings against elected officials whether human resources complaints, felony charges, ethics charges, or House/Senate sanctions, should be made available to the public.