Nancy Watzman, our Colorado-based research and investigative projects director, has this piece in The Denver Post on the potential to make real progress in passing Clean Elections-style full public financing for congressional elections - something she'd like to hear more about from Colorado's represenatatives in Congress.

Public Campaign's President and CEO, Nick Nyhart along with representatives from US PIRG, Democracy Matters, and Common Cause California talked with the San Francisco Chronicle a few days ago about the possibilty of passing Clean Elections at the federal level. Yesterday the Chronicle published this strong endorsement to "drain the swamp" and clean up Congress by making Clean Elections a part of the Democratic agenda in 2007.

The New Jersey Assembly has passed legislation to extend the state's Clean Elections pilot program, with some modifications. The effort to expand the pilot program is excellent - hopefully down the road some consideration will be given to extending the Clean Elections program to cover primaries.

This article in the Kennebec Journal covers a series of proposals being considered by Maine's legislature to improve its landmark Clean Elections law, passed in 1997, to respond to activities that transpired in the 2006 election that suggested some tweaks to the system might be in order.

Ed Garvey, writing for Wisconsin's Capital Times, urges Governor Jim Doyle to back public financing of campaigns and take special interest money's bite out of state politics. Dismissing and discrediting the arguments against a Clean Elections model, Garvey makes his case for putting elections back in the hands of people.

David Sirota, author of Hostile Takeover, writes on TomPaine.com that now is the moment to push for full public financing of federal campaigns. There are encouraging circumstances - and some roadblocks, of course - that could make the legacy of the 2006 elections an end the legalized bribery masquerading as our campaign finance system.

Even as votes are still being counted in close races around the country, speculation on reforms to counter the high-cost, special-interest dominated election process is being offered up. Writers at both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Winston-Salem Journal cite the Voters First Pledge, its principles and signers, as showing the way forward.

Edgar Bronfman Sr., former CEO of Seagrams, and Deborah Simpson, a former waitress and current Clean-elected state legislator in Maine co-author this editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer on why they support Clean Elections. It's an excellent read.

Andy Sauer, executive director of Connecticut Common Cause and major player in the state's public financing victory last year asks in The Day whether this election season - with its $2.6 billion price tag and unprecendented barrage of negative attack ads - has convinced the people it's time for a change.

Sauer distills the real cost of the election to voters:

David Donnelly, our national campaigns director, writes over at MyDD about visiting his son's class to talk about elections - and facing the difference between "classroom democracy" and the real power-brokering in Washington.

He writes: