The Sunnyvale Sun

Letters & Opinions

Speak Out

Publicly financed
elections are needed

Thank you for Stephen Baxter's article on public financing of campaigns, currently under study by the city council.

As Arizona and Maine have already discovered, publicly-funded elections greatly reduce the influence of private money in our public electoral process, including the influence of independent expenditure groups who flood our mailboxes with messages the candidate can neither control or respond to.

Doing nothing, and continuing to allow campaigns to be privately bankrolled, means to forfeit what's left of our democracy and allow those with the most money to continue deciding who gets to run and who ultimately wins.

Where public financing systems already exist, they actually save taxpayer dollars in the long run, and allow elections to be more about issues and ideas instead of mere fundraising contests.

Three cheers for Sunnyvale's forward looking city council.

Craig Dunkerley

San Jose