Jack Abramoff is back up for sentencing today.  After serving part of a six-year sentence on a Florida casino fraud, he's now going to be sentenced for what he's best known for: bribing lawmakers with gifts, trips, and campaign cash and defrauding Indian tribes.

It's a sad but important reminder that in a private-money-driven political system, we'll continue to see bad actors and bad decisions made in a bad system.

We could go down a different road, which is what our Voters First Pledge campaign is all about -- getting candidates for Congress committed now, while they're running for election or reelection, to sign on in support of comprehensive public financing.

We're asking folks to send a No More Abramoffs message to Congress, to ask friends and family to do the same, and to take the message directly to the candidates by downloading and using this downloadable "Abramoff flyer" to communicate back to our future elected officials to take the Voters First Pledge.

UPDATE: Abramoff was sentenced to four years in prison.

The Washington Post calls for a federal redistricting reform measure at the federal level.

The piece points out that both McCain and Obama have made public statements in support of redistricting reform, but there's been virtually no progress yet on the federal front.

Meanwhile, in California, Common Cause and a coalition of groups have put a major redistricting initiative on the ballot in November and are now urging voters to vote Yes on Prop 11, the California Voters FIRST Initiative.

California Common Cause has worked for years to change the process by which politicians currently draw their own political districts -- a process that in effect allows politicians to choose their voters before voters can choose among politicians.

These efforts took a big step forward today with the official launch of the Voters FIRST initiative.  This ballot question, filed by Common Cause, AARP, and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, will appear on the November 2008 ballot if enough Californians sign petitions to support it by next April.
Read the full text of the initiative here.

Today, the campaign received a big boost in receiving endorsements from the California League of Women Voters and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

One step, two step, and another step after that... it's the reform dance! After Congress puts the first set of important ethics reforms into place, here's hoping they don't turn off the music. Not to take away from the Democrats' initial package of reforms--tightening the rules on gifts and travel, limiting junkets, and more--but the real prize will be taking big money out of the campaign equation via full public financing of elections. It's the "bolero" of reforms, if you will. This dance happens to take place all around the country, from USA Today's editorial page today... ... to Gov. Eliot Spitzer's "State of the State" in New York yesterday: The reforms laid out by the new Democratic leadership for the first 100 hours are great, but let's not turn the jukebox off after that. We've got a lot more to do to clean up Congress and put democracy back in the hands of the voters, where it belongs. (Insert final music and dance metaphor here.)

This past election seemed to scream "Reform!" to any member of Congress within earshot. The House leadership is actually discussing some serious, important ethics changes that are likely to go through. And full public financing--considered by many to be the most fundamental, and therefore most challenging, reform to pass, because it digs deepest in undermining the big-money-rules-politics system we're stuck in--is starting to gain some traction.

From the Sunday New York Times:


But with that traction comes the inevitable resistance from entrenched politicians who don't like the idea of having to change the system that put them in power. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) shows how to spin it...

Way, way back in the spring of 2006, a mere 40 members of Congress publicly supported Clean Elections. Now that the elections are over, just a half-year later, that number has climbed to 108.

What's especially exciting is that 20 new members of the House signed the Voters First Pledge during this campaign season--along with 69 incumbent House members who won reelection--meaning that the incoming class of House freshmen brings substantial support for full public funding of Congressional elections. Those folks are joined by the other 13 House members who already supported a Clean Elections bill in the House, plus six Senators.

That's a lot of supporters, up 170% from earlier this year. An idea that once seemed like a pipe dream is now one step closer to becoming the way we run elections for Congress in this country.

Picture this: Congressional candidates in 2010 turning down special interest dollars, receiving public funding from the U.S. government, and then spending every day until Election Day just talking to voters all day long.

It sounds great, but we'll have to fight to make it happen.

Following Josh's excellent posts about the Lou Dobbs segment on the Voters First campaign, I wanted to make sure everyone who missed it last night could catch up via YouTube. There are two segments, and the one featuring Common Cause and the Voters First campaign starts at about 3:30.

Today, Common Cause's Mary Boyle taped an interview with CNN's nightly program "Lou Dobbs Tonight," discussing Clean Elections and the Voters First Pledge. It's scheduled to air tonight. The show airs nightly at 6 p.m. EST.

All along, we've said that those in the business community--and elsewhere--who believe in fiscal responsibility ought to be on our side in fighting for full public financing of elections.  Lou Dobbs, an Emmy-award winner and anchor of CNN's "Lou Dobbs tonight," is a prime example.  His recent book, "The War on the Middle Class," makes the case loud and clear.  Here's an excerpt:

No, I didn't just copy that from our page on public financing--but I could have.  That's Lou Dobbs, prominent business journalist and former host of "Moneyline," saying what we've said all along: full public financing is critical to fixing our political system.

Welcome to the chorus, Lou.

UPDATE: The piece ran last night and included great clips of Mary and a ringing endorsement from Dobbs. Read the transcript, after the jump.