Clean Elections got its share of attention over the last few days. The primary elections in Connecticut that saw both a higher number of contested races and a high participation from Clean Elections candidates drew this story in the New York Times about the new system that includes perspectives from several state lawmakers. Stories popped up this weekend in New Jersey and Wisconsin as well.

From the Times story:

This November’s general election, when 187 legislative seats will be up for grabs, will be the first one in which incumbents seeking re-election and their challengers will be tapping into the public financing system.

More than $2.6 million has already been distributed to candidates, and state officials expect that amount to at least double by Election Day.

Some politicians say the change may well alter the way future General Assembly leaders are chosen. It is also quite likely to change the strategy of lawmakers seeking leadership slots, even if not right away, and increase the independence of newly elected lawmakers.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a House Republican leader before becoming lieutenant governor in 1995, said the old system inevitably created suspicion that politicians who controlled political action committees were buying the support of their colleagues by passing around some of the campaign largess.

“I think there was always that perception,” she said in a recent interview. “I think that, spoken or unspoken, there was an attitude of, ‘Hey, he helped me out, I’ll do anything I can to help him out.’ ”

Even as Connecticut's Clean Elections program appears off to a terrific start, supporters of public financing for Wisconsin judicial elections are having a hard time getting candidates to go on record with their position on the issue. Candidate questionnaires are going mostly unreturned -- are they too busy raising money?

In New Jersey the debate over renewal of the Clean Elections pilot program rages on. The Center for Competitive Politics is anti-Clean Elections and has been firing off letters and op-eds claiming Clean Elections doesn't work. As the Brennan Center points out in this step-by-step analysis of CCP's arguments, these claims boil down to a lot of rhetoric and precious little evidence to back it up:

After reviewing CCP's Preliminary Findings, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law concludes:

• The conclusions reflect an overly simplified and misleading view of the Clean Elections program.
  
  
  
• The survey does not show there is any problem whatsoever with New Jersey's Clean Elections program.
  
  
  
• The data do not support CCP's conclusions and many data points remain undisclosed.
  
  
  
• Methodological flaws plague CCP's survey and analysis.
  
  

Overall, the report's methodology appears unscientific because there is no discussion of how survey targets were chosen. CCP will not release either the survey questions or the full set of responses to the survey. On August 11, 2008, CCP denied the Brennan Center's request for the data and the original survey.