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Here we have a definitive model of the cause and effect controversy. Voter apathy has absolutely nothing to do with diminishing democracy in the United States. The perception of lost, or waning, democracy has everything to do with voter apathy.

The low percentage of eligible voters who choose to exercise their franchise rights is a direct result of the facts that only those who can garner multi-millions of dollars and hire the slickest advertisers are capable of winning top offices in our nation. These candidates do not even have to take strong stands on issues; they just have to be rhetorically slick and garner loads of money. (i.e. a higher percentage of voters will not produce better leaders, but poor choices for leaders will definitely cause a decrease in voter turnout.)

Unfortunately, those multi-millions of dollars are mostly controlled by special interests and lobbyists who are only too glad to decide, from among the willing candidates, those from whom we should get to select. And, for the most part, those candidates are the ones who will not rock the boat but continue to manage the country from Washington in the same old "business as usual" manner. I don't think I am exposing any national secrets here!

In this particular presidential election (2008), I have heard only one candidate make a strong argument for publicly-financed elections. Public financing would be a good start to democratizing our democracy. This would place more candidates at our disposal and, I believe, encourage more people to vote. And, to have more viable candidates, we must accept a system that recognizes more than two political parties.

The weakness in this is that we are still going to have some stiff requirements in each state for getting on the ballot. Jane Doe, though she may be an absolute genius on all issues foreign and domestic, and have leadership skills second to no one, will still suffer the fate of not having enough public exposure to get her on enough state ballots to win an election. Public exposure, once more, brings us back to the multi-million dollar backers.

In this coming election, we could well see two, viable, independent candidates-Bloomberg and Nader. Would that we got about a dozen. Nader is credited with moving Florida from the Gore ticket to the Bush ticket in 2000. I don't know this to be true because I heard Nader, on the Chris Matthews show, say that he got more Republican votes than he did Democratic votes. But, for the sake of argument, let's say that

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