LEWISTON – Supporters of recently introduced federal legislation that would create a voluntary public finance system for congressional races are holding Maine’s Clean Election Act up as evidence such systems can work.

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine’s 1st District, said the Senate and House versions of the bills are bipartisan and based, in part, on Maine’s program.

Passed as a citizen initiative in 1996, the Maine Clean Election Act provides public funds for gubernatorial and state legislative candidates. On the federal level, public financing is available only to presidential candidates.

Pingree said she was optimistic about the momentum behind the federal legislation.

“I spoke to President Obama last night about this and he said if it made it to his desk, he would sign it,” Pingree said in a phone interview Friday.

She said lawmakers on the national stage spend too much time raising money and not enough time concentrating on the problems of the day.

“When I’m in Washington, we’ll go take some votes on the floor and then you’ll see a third of the members head to their national party headquarters to make fundraising phone calls,” she said.

Pingree, a former state legislator, also served as president of Common Cause, a Washington, D.C.-based group that supports campaign finance reform and increased government ethics and accountability.

The current electoral process is the biggest long-term problem facing citizens, said John Rauh, board chairman of Americans for Campaign Reform, a bipartisan organization based in Concord, N.H.

“The search system to picking the leaders of America, and to some extent the world, is broken,” Rauh said. “Thank you, Maine, for leading the way. You’ve done a fabulous job. We believe strongly that voluntary public funding is a superb way to fix this system.”

Malory O. Shaughnessy, executive director of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, said Maine state legislative races have become much more competitive thanks to the public financing system, which about 86 percent of candidates have used.

“There were so many people that were being elected who just had no opponent,” she said. “There’s only so much money to raise. It has really improved the caliber and the diversity of who we have in Augusta.”

As for potential roadblocks, Pingree said it can be difficult to convince entrenched politicians with full campaign war chests that they should support a bill that would give their opponents enough public funding to potentially unseat them. She also said special interest groups are a factor.

“This would take away their advantage,” she said.

Maine’s 2nd District Congressman Mike Michaud, a Democrat, said he supported the goals of the legislation.

Rauh, who is confident the House will pass the measure, has his eyes set on the Senate, and specifically, on Maine’s pair of moderate Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, whose endorsements he is actively seeking.

Collins supports reforming the presidential public fundraising system, including raising the total amount of funds available, but not launching a congressional system, said her spokesman, Kevin Kelley.

“(She) believes the last thing we should be spending taxpayer money on, especially during an economic crisis, is campaigns for members of Congress,” Kelley said.

Snowe said she would look at the new version of the legislation before taking an official position.

“Our current system is far from perfect,” she said in a written statement, adding that she also had concerns about asking taxpayers to pay for congressional races, “especially given that, in 2008, more than $149 million was spent in races for the U.S. Senate alone.”

The cost of the proposed congressional public financing system would be a little less than $2 billion per year, according to Rauh, or between $3.5 billion and $4 billion per congressional election cycle.