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allow real people to become elected officials, and it will allow those people to focus on dealing with the issues of constituents instead of pandering for money. Everybody wins. We are no longer hassled for money. Candidates are no longer relegated to begging, focused on issues not fundraising. Big money support looses its value and we return to a democracy about ideas.

How? Short answer, we pay for it. Money talks. We want our government to represent us, we take a clue from the international corporate-conglomerate playbook and buy them. (Personally I'd love to see my elected officials paid enough money that they can laugh at the bribes special interests might throw their way. Now they're more likely to end up bankrupt by campaign debt if they don't use the connections they make in office to gain wealth. Probably a few people disagree with me though so I'm flexible on that.)

But fortunately for us, when we all come together as a society the amount of money we need is pretty insignificant. The amount of money it would take to publicly fund California campaigns was calculated at 0.02% of the annual state budget. I can think of a few 0.05% items that I think this is more important than. This is the single most fundamental, crucial and tragically neglected responsibility of our government, in my opinion. The place where a small change can have a huge effect. This issue effects all other issues. It's broken and we must fix it.

Learn more about this author, Derek Gulbranson.
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