Our friends at Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement decided to find out what people in their state really think of full public financing of campaigns.  They put a poll out and the results were very encouraging  -- a full three-quarters of those surveyed expressed support.  Read more on the poll here.

Marv Ott, the Republican candidate running in the Minnesota House District 3A race has joined the growing list of lawmakers who've decided the big checks that lobbyists and the like are able to write campaigns aren't worth the questions about ethics they raise.  He's swearing off money from lobbyists and special interests for his campaign.

Want to see where the candidates running to represent you in Congress stand on a Fair Elections system of full public financing for congressional campaigns?  Visit our new and improved Voters First Pledge website that lets you search by state, party, or position on public financing to find out whether the people who want your vote are ready to get big money out of politics.  Visit the site and find out where the candidates stand!

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) used to be one of Clean Elections staunchest allies, supporting efforts to win publicly financed elections at the state level and speaking out about the corrupting influence of money in politics at the federal level. But in recent years his commitment to this issue has flagged and as our own David Donnelly writes at Huffington Post, we're sorry to see him go.

Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institute was a champion of the McCain-Feingold reforms, and his analysis helped get the law passed. Now, as he explains in an interview with Abby Rapoport at The American Prospect, he is leaning more towards what can be done with public financing of campaigns, both fixing the presidential system and creating a Congressional system.

Bob Bernick Jr. acknowledges he feels like he's going out on a limb with this editorial in support of full public financing campaign. Bernick is writing in Utah's Deseret News, a paper that has covered its share of money in politics/lobbyists/corruption stories so this seems like a logical progression in their exploration of the topic, but Bernick has dim hopes about support in the state, and in Congress, for public financing.