Citizen Equality Act of 2017

The Citizen Equality Act of 2017 is a draft piece of legislation proposed by former 2016 American presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig. The act was the centerpiece of Lessig's campaign platform, encompassing his plans for campaign finance reform, expansion of voting access, and revised districting laws. Lessig had stated that if elected, he would make these reforms the first priority of his presidency. At the start of his campaign, he announced his candidacy as a "referendum," stating that he would step down upon the enactment of the Citizen Equality Act and turn the presidency over to the vice president. In an October 2015 interview on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, he retracted this statement and expressed his intention to stay on as president if elected. On November 2, 2015, Lessig ended his bid for the presidency, citing changes in Democratic Party rules that excluded him from the stage during televised debates.

Lessig cited the connection between moneyed interests and political campaigns as the greatest barrier to equal representation in American democracy.

In a 2013 TED talk, he presented statistics on the number of citizens responsible for raising the bulk of campaign funds: ".000042 percent — for those of you doing the numbers, you know that's 132 Americans — gave 60 percent of the Super PAC money spent in the cycle we have just seen ending ... it's .05 percent who are our relevant funders in America."

He argued that other policy goals could not be realized until campaign financing laws diminish the influence of super PACs and corporate entities over Congressional election results. "So I want you to take hold, to grab the issue you care the most about. Climate change is mine, but it might be financial reform or a simpler tax system or inequality ... We will never get your issue solved until we fix this issue first. So it's not that mine is the most important issue ... but mine is the first issue."

His campaign emphasized reducing the differential between the financial contributions of these entities and those of small donors through policy modifications: "this is a problem of just incentives, just incentives. Change the incentives, and the behavior changes, and the states that have adopted small dollar funded systems have seen overnight a change in the practice."

As recently as 2011, Lessig's activism had centered on exploring the possibility of a Second Constitutional Convention, culminating in a Conference on the Constitutional Convention held at Harvard Law School in September of that year. His 2011 book Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It also investigates a second Convention as a solution to the influence of business interests on legislature. Lessig and legal scholar Sanford Levinson, best known for his book calling for a Second Constitutional Convention, gave a joint podcast with the National Constitution Center in 2014 to discuss the advantages of and challenges to changing the Constitution. However, since the beginning of his presidential campaign, Lessig had adjusted his focus to reforms within the existing legal system - namely, his draft legislation.

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