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Malinowski Hosts 'Protecting Democracy' Teleconference

May 5, 2020

Rep. Tom Malinowski , D-7, on Friday, May 1, hosted a virtual forum called "Defending Our Vote & Combating Corruption" on protecting democracy and expressing the need for voting by mail, campaign finance reform, and not forcing voters to choose between voting rights and their health. Malinowski was joined by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Maryland, chair of the Democracy Reform Task Force, and Tiffany Muller, president and executive director of End Citizens United and Let America Vote, for a virtual forum on protecting democracy and defending the vote during the coronavirus pandemic and while combating the influence of special interests…. "I ran on those issues. We demanded that our future Congressional leadership, if we were elected, take this up as their top priority and indeed, after we were elected, under Congressman Sarbanes' leadership, we drafted a bill called HR 1 – the first bill introduced in the house in that term – that took on ethics reform, that took on campaign finance and dark money in our politics that took on partisan gerrymandering. We passed it in the House and as I suppose one might have predicted it has ever since been blocked by the main opponent of reform in our country today – Sen. Mitch McConnell, leader of the United States Senate…. Sarbanes said there needs to be a new way of funding campaigns where the people are in charge and where they own the system and where they own the priorities when it comes to policy. "We're going to go to the people that have broken our democracy by leaning on it the big corporations and the wealthy and we're going to have them be the ones to pay to fix this democracy because that's how it ought to work," Sarbanes said. "So let's take back control of how policies made in Washington by having a people step up and own the system."