The Calvin College chapter of Democracy Matters makes the news for their efforts to rally support behind the Fair Elections Now Act in the Senate, and public funding of elections as the state and federal level. Great work by the students, and a very positive story!

Stanford law professor and noted copyright law expert Lawrence Lessig launched his new venture today, Change-Congress.org, designed to track the position of members of Congress on key reform issues, and put them on the record in support of things like the Fair Elections Now Act, which would publicly finance congressional campaigns. Read more about his project here.

Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford who has spent much of his career focused on copyright law is taking up the cause of cleaning up Congress. His new project, change-congress.org will track the positions of congressional candidates in this year's elections on a number of reform proposals and allow people to direct donations to candidates based on their support for these proposals.

Laura MacCleery of the Brennan Center for Justice challenges a recent proposition in Roll Call to deal with the largely unregulated activities of independent "527" committees in elections by loosening campaign contributions limits, suggesting that a much better alternative is a robust full public financing program for federal elections.

Kentucky lawyer Edward Bonnie attacks the "free speech" arguments against public financing of elections in the Courier Journal op-ed. Arguing that Fair and Clean Elections programs promote, rather than limit, speech Bonnie talks up the promise of the Fair Elections Now Act introduced in the Senate while questioning whether we want to continue to have Sen. Mitch McConnell-style elections where money is the yardstick for a candidate's worth.

A candidate hoping to challenge Sen. Saxby Chambliss in Georgia is making addressing our campaign finance problems a central focus of his campaign. He has decided to follow the parameters of the Fair Elections Now Act that was introduced in the Senate last year, but hasn't yet passed.