Tomorrow afternoon in the Campus Center, the University Democrats and Mass Voters for Clean Elections will co-sponsor an open forum to raise awareness about unfair elections.

The forum will take place in room 165 of the Campus Center at 4:30 p.m.

Ellen Story, State Representative for the Third Hampshire District, Lauren Mattison, a graduate student and member of the University Democrats and various professors will attend the forum.

At the forum, Mattison will open with a presentation about money, politics and how they go hand in hand.

“It’s hard to run a campaign without money,” Mattison said. After Mattison’s presentation, Story will elaborate on the importance on the connection between money and politics.

Following Story’s presentation there will be an open forum. The forum will be aimed at students. Mattison said that focusing on students is unusual, as a lot of students don’t understand the importance of clean elections, and that this should be an interesting topic for students.

Mattison said that in 1998 a clean election law was passed that would help out people who had local support but not a lot of money.

Due to budget cuts, the state didn’t give the necessary funding to the law. The Supreme Judicial Court then told the legislature to either fund or repeal the law, to which they chose the latter, Mattison said. The law was repealed in June of this year.

“The legislature pretty much broke the law,” Mattison said about the decision to repeal the law that was voted in by a 67 percent majority five years ago.

Mattison said that the law was supposed to have spending limits for candidates, and that the limits depended on a sliding scale based on the number of people being represented.

“The candidates who win have a lot of money,” Mattison said.

Mattison said that late last year, before it was repealed, some funds were allocated to candidates. However, the money was given out too late to impact the election. She also said that Maine and Arizona have strict clean elections laws, and that many other states are in various stages of passing such laws.

Mattison said that a possible target date for these laws to be voted on by the legislature is in 2006, but that is tentative. She added that to get these laws to pass and stay, we need to educate legislatures on the issue and build more support for clean elections. However, there will always be people who oppose the issue, she said.