This is an except from the lead article on the Clean Money Campaign Reform page. The full article and much additional information can be found at their site.

HealthWrights staff

The role of big money in American politics should make the most cynical lawmaker blush and the average citizen furious. Politics has become an arms race, with special-interest money taking on the role of missiles. Every two years, campaign costs skyrocket. Average voters are shutout as effectively as if Congress had passed a new poll tax, charging them for the right to vote.

Many good people decide not to enter politics, because they are intimidated and disgusted by the need to raise huge campaign war chests or simply don’t have the connections to do so. Our democracy is sinking in a cauldron of systematic influence peddling, flagrant abuse of loopholes and political favors granted to wealthy special interests.

Some donors become household names, like Ken Lay and Enron. Others, like the pharmaceutical lobby, the tobacco lobby, the oil lobby and the banking lobby, get their bidding done beneath the headlines; their drain on the public treasury only occasionally coming into view. The big scandal isn’t illegal contributions, it’s that so much of the money changing hands is completely legal.

In the spring of 2002, responding to the rising public clamor for change, Congress finally took some first steps to address this problem by banning unlimited federal “soft money” donations and reining in spending on electioneering advertising disguised as”issue ads.” But even if these measures are upheld in court, no one claims that they will fundamentally change the current system. Campaign costs will keep growing, wealthy special interests will still stand at the front of the line, public officials will still have to raise large sums of private money for their campaigns, and good, qualified people will still be deterred from running for office. Clearly, the laws governing campaign financing need a comprehensive overhaul.

The voters are far ahead of the politicians in moving for change. In November 1996, in Maine, voters approved a Clean Elections initiative, by a 56 to 44 percent margin, that did something that no state or federal legislation had ever done. It offered full public financing to candidates for state office who choose to reject special-interest contributions and agree to campaign spending limits. Those who discounted the Maine law as a one-state wonder were soon proved wrong. In June 1997, the Vermont legislature voted overwhelmingly to create such a system for the governor and lieutenant governor’s races. And in November 1998, voters in both Arizona and Massachusetts adopted new Clean elections systems via ballot initiatives.