Voters looking for . They are looking for an economic plan that makes sense and that is fair. They are looking for a Healthcare System that looks makes sense. A lot of nevada is in the service industry. And they are spoiled by having a car lack Health Care Plan from the unions which is another great contradiction about nevada, right to work state, but an incredibly strong labor presence in southern nevada, so i dont think the interest of nevadas much different from the interest of wisconsin or new york or floridians. Cspan, crated by americas cabletelevision companies are brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. Starting shortly here on cspan2 we will take you live to a conversation on money and politics including the impact on millennials, judicial elections and Public Financing. A live view here at the George Washington law Student Conference Center in this event is about to get started hosted by the American Constitution Society for law and public policy. Again, the event should get started in a few minutes life here on cspan2. Eight notes about our live Coverage Later this evening at 9 00 p. M. Eastern it is the third president ial debate at the university of nevada las vegas with the third debate between Hillary Clinton and donald trump after that coverage of the spin room with candidates and their surrogates go after the debate to talk with reporters and thats a lot coming up tonight starting at 9 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. Of course, other waste watch the debate through cspan, you can watch on demand using your desktop, phone or tablets at cspan. Org. You can also listen to the debate life if you cant watch you can listen live on your phone with the free cspan radio at. You can download that at the app store or google play. Again, the third president ial debate tonight and 9 00 p. M. Eastern on the cspan networks. Here, her conversation on money and politics should start shortly live on cspan2. While we wait for this event to get away, a discussion on get out the vote efforts from todays washington journal. Now, back in our studio we are joined by Melanie Campbell who serves as president ceo of the National Coalition of black participation and on the black womens roundtable. Melanie campbell, in 2008 and 2012 voting rates among black women exceeded all of their race and gender groups. What expectations for the 2016 election . Guest we see it did not just started 08. Lakh women first of all, thank you for inviting me. Thoroughly enjoy and appreciate you and your journalism. But, black women have been floating your q talk about the black vote when there was a surge in the black vote because black women not only turned out the vote, but we also are the influencers when it comes to encouraging our children to vote, our husbands, our significant others to vote and getting engaged in the community. A lot of the work is done around engaging when it comes to black vote especially many of us are led by black women, so we i have been into many states to count. From the primaries till now and so there is a high level of engagement with black women. The biggest challenge is making sure millennials votes and thats our biggest concern. Host speaking to that on the front page of todays Washington Post with the headline among young black activist clinton can be a tough sell. Why do you think that is correct this election has been very toxic. I been doing this longer than i want to admit, so i will give you my political analysis as opposed to my non partisan analysis. Acs is a National Organization devoted to bring together top legal minds to articulate a progressive vision of the u. S. Constitution am part of that suffers to mimic right and came at Campaign Finance reform and efforts to try to build a better democracy together. So, what we will talk about today as both attorneys and organizers and folks involved in the field is how millennials are uniquely situated to tackle the issue of money in politics. Money and politics are always a problem in the United States. We have never had a perfect democracy, but with Citizens United, recent Supreme Court has made it more difficult for volkswagen equal voice and vote in our democracy, so we are very lucky to be joined by the dream team of young millennial up and comers and democracy space. On the far left is Brandon Fisher associate counsel of the Campaign Legal center. Next is austin the lawley, director of Youth Engagement for the Democracy Alliance and right next to me is allie counsel. So, a couple things programming wise to start off on. Acs has a couple of events coming up next month and we are getting attorneys in the area who are able to volunteer their time on election day to do something called Election Protection where we manned the phones and try to answer questions that folks from around the country has on election day to make sure everyones vote is counted. We also have an event on the 17th of november, Voting Rights training with an organization, Voting Rights institute which is par Campaign Legal center apart American Constitutional Society and park Georgetown University and we will have trained for how attorneys can help pro bono basis to make sure everyones vote is counted. So, today we will talk about finding topics. We will talk about what the current legal landscape is, with the us Supreme Court has given us, how it got whats impossible under the current rules and current rubric. We are going to talk about looking at the big picture and how millennials have engaged in other progressive movements, what kind of successes millennials have been able to get behind in other areas of the lot and then we will take a look inward and talk about what the democracy field is good at doing and where it has deficiencies and how can we better position to lead and especially have millennials lead the next phase of the movement and finally we will end on it bit of optimism and talk about whats possible and now, we have a Supreme Court vacancy. So we will hear what a doomed new democracy agenda can mean not just were millennials, but for folks around the country. Lets start off my name is Scott Counsel with a group called free speech for people, a Legal Organization devoted to taking ideas into action to promote and reclaim our democracy and to go from defense to the offense in order to get initiatives moving to help build an inclusive democracy for all. Speaking of a legal landscape and what we are looking at now i will turn to our resident attorneys on the panel, which is brendan and ally to give us an idea of where we are coming from, where we are at how we got here. Allie, if you want to start us off. Sure. Can you all hear me in room okay . So, first to scott and acs thank you for having the support conversation and great to be up here with these panelist. In terms of the legal landscape, probably the most wellknown money and politics Supreme Court decision is Citizens United decided in 2010, and Citizens United really unleashed spending by corporations on our elections and the reasoning in that decision also paved the way for super pacs, which are other vehicles that wealthy interest can use to spend in elections. Citizens united really made a lot of people mad and sparked a lot of great activism around the country that we will hear more about, but we see the problem in the legal landscape as actually going back further to a case called buckley versus valeo and that case was decided in 1976. It was after the watergate scandal and around that time the congress had passed a fairly comprehensive package of money in politics reform. Some of the provisions that package were challenged and where the subject of this buckley litigation. So, some of the provisions in that package were upheld and remain part of our legal landscape today and that includes contribution limits, so there are limits on the amount that individuals can give to particular candidate or party, but on the other hand the Buckley Court struck down limits on spending and that includes limits on how much individuals can spend on their own money on elections as long as they do so independently of candidates. So, we have never really got a chance to see how the comprehensive package would have worked together, but probably more problematic is the reasoning that the Buckley Court gave us in that decision. So, the court said that the government has to have an important reason to pass campaignfinance reform. It told us that the only reason that is important enough to justify campaignfinance for form and limits on money is to prevent corruption or the parents of corruption. At the same time the Buckley Court says government cannot act to enhance political equality or level the Playing Field among candidates. So, since the 70s courts have been asking this really narrow question of whether a Campaign Finance or perform is prevent corruption and the effect of this framework is that we havent really been allowed to address some of the biggest problems that we face in our political system and that includes things like barriers to entry, candidates are not taken seriously politically unless they can raise a lot of money and that leaves a lot of people out. It also means we cannot talk about the vastly unequal political power and lyrical voice in this country in these cases there queen no elected officials are a lot more responsive to wealthy interests in the donor class and thats a problem for many reasons, not least of which is at the donor classes disproportionally are very white and also mail, wealthy and frankly there arent a lot of millennials in the donor class either, given that we just dont control that much of the wealth and we are burdened by student debt. Thank you. Brendan. Thank you for having me here. So, one point went to emphasize is that its not only the Supreme Court that is to blame for the broken Campaign Finances that we are living in. It also rests in large part with the federal election commission, which is the federal Agency Charged with administering and enforcing federal election law. Sixmember commission enacted after the watergate scandal, required for votes to take any action to require votes to promulgate new rules, for both to open Enforcement Actions and no more than three members can be part of the sample liquid party, so therethrough republican members, curly to democratic vendors and one independent and the problem is not so much that its a partisan split. Its not the republicans who want to enforce the lot against democrats and democrats want to enforce audience republicans. Isnt ideological split and currently the three republican members are ideologically opposed to the enforcement of campaignfinance laws, so even though laws that exist after are not currently in force. , for example as allie describes Citizens United said that because independent expenditures are independents there is little risk of those expenditures corrupting a candidate and therefore, spending by independent groups late super pacs cannot be limited. But, if spending is not independent it does pose a risk of corruption if treated under federal law as a contribution to a candidate subject to a 2700 limit and falls to the fec to preserve the independence and uphold the laws and regulations guaranteeing that independence, enforcing laws and regulation to finding corporation. The fec has interpreted this to allow candidates to appear at planning fundraisers. You have seen both president ial candidates this year hedging ever closer to their supportive super pack undermining the idea of any sort of independents. Again, Citizens United the reason they rested on this notion that independent expenditures are generally independent and is the fault of the fec that we have single candidate super pacs. Citizens united also endorsed disclosure of donations predicting the disclosure would help limit the opportunity for corruption from unlimited independent expenditures, but dark money, and disclose political spending has exploded in recent years and that is the fault of the fec undermining the existing disclosure laws by narrowly interpreting it to only apply to what a nonprofit expense on election that theyll have to disclose contributions made for the purpose of funding those ads. Any nonprofit can assert that none of the contributions made to it were given for the purpose of funding those ads. Therefore, we have no donor disclosure and we have dark money. So, the political system, campaignfinance system and not be great after Citizens United if the fec enforce the law, but it would be better than what we have now and also looking forward its import to keep in mind that critical elements in any campaignfinance system and any campaignfinance regime is that administration and enforcement of the law even if we successfully overturn Citizens United and congress and asked to laws. Those laws will really not be worth the paper theyre written not if they are not effectively administered and enforced. So, this can seem disconcerting, but in some ways this is an opportunity because it is a lot easier than overturning Citizens United. The commissioners to the fec are appointed by the president s pick the next president could appoint new commissioners. One of the things we have been calling for is for the president to appoint a Blueribbon Commission of nonpartisan retired judges, not partisan retired lawenforcement officers and they can come up with a list of potential commissioners and the president could appoint commissioners from the list and we would actually see the laws that continue to exist after Citizens United effectively enforced. That is one thing. Theres also Bipartisan Legislation introducing congress to reform the fec and make it a more effective agency. So, that i think is one thing that could happen. Legislatively or be at the injected it would make a big difference in improving our campaignfinance system. After Citizens United there so plenty of room for proactive legislation in the realm of disclosure, in the realm of coordination, courtney rules and also Public Financing and i think we will talk more about that later, but you have seen congress is hopeless or congress will not pass the proactive legislation on these issues, but you have states and cities really advancing proactive legislation. South dakota has a Ballot Initiative currently pending that would improve disclosure seattle recently enacted a really innovative Democracy Voucher Program for every voter gets for that 25dollar vouchers to give to a candidate of their choice. California has approved its coordination those are just a few things that still could happen even short of overturning Citizens United or short of confirming a new justice on the Supreme Court. So, overall its not good news, but there is reason for hope. We focused on the first two branches a lot, legislative branch, executive branch, but a lot of the work that the American Constitution Society has focused on is how our campaignfinance finance system is affecting our judges, so our judges are elected and 38 states across the country. 95 of all cases filed in the us originate in state court. State court judges hit on a ton of major policy issues in the environment, labor, criminal justice Voting Rights and we will talk later about a report about who makes up those state Court Benches and are they reflecting the communities they serve, but its important to keep in mind at the same time super pacs have come to dominate legislative elections and is the same sort for judicial elections with more spending in judicial elections than ever before a special Interest Groups are having a larger role than they ever have before. We will get into that later appeared so, lets turn to what has been possible, a bit of bright lining to this end we will go to austin with the Democracy Alliance. 70 of americans oppose Citizens United. Its been a good rallying point especially for young people here can you give us a sense if there is good news what is the good news and whats possible . Thank you, first of all for having me and to acs and having all of us in the conversation. It will be rich because there were a couple points that was brought up and we could even have de