American elections look more and more like auctions every year. This is because four billion dollars from the wealthy elite will dictate which politicians run and win the next presidential election cycle. In order to save American democracy, and the many problems that come with the corrupting influence of money in politics, we need to change the way our politicians elections are funded.

The Fair Elections Now Act, a bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), will significantly reduce the influence of money in politics. This bill will bring a voluntary system of public financing for all congressional elections in this country.

This public financing system will allow qualified candidates to work truly for the people, without owing favors to private campaign contributors. In addition, this public financing system will allow people from all walks of life to have fair chance to become elected, not just people with wealth or connections to wealth.

Legitimate public financing systems have been shown to work in the states of Arizona, Connecticut and Maine. Various electoral seats in New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Vermont and Oregon have also adopted full public financing systems.

All of these places show positive results, proving that campaign finance reform is the reform that makes all others possible. This is because those who have been providing financing for political campaigns “ the wealthy “ have controlled movements for reform, from humanitarian efforts to environmental policy, and public campaign financing is reversing this.

There used to be felony convictions in this country for many of the practices of private funding that go on today. Most developed countries have banned private money in politics. There is an endless list of the negative effects of private money in politics.

Its well known on Capitol Hill that private money in politics is at the root cause for why working Americans pay three-fourths of total taxes, why the wealthy have gotten over a trillion in tax cuts the past 10 years, why billions of dollars have been wiped out from employee pension funds, why corporate farms using dangerous methods will get billions of dollars in government subsidies, why food processing plants have been deregulated, why we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, why the wealthy are pardoned from tax evasion and other crimes, and why only 23.5 percent of elected officials in the United States are women.

In a recent visit, poet Amiri Baraka reminded the UWM audience that we are not part of a university because we are smart; we are part of a university because people before us made sacrifices to get us here. We owe it to our college privilege to get involved in this obvious struggle for equality and justice.

UWM students created a student group called Democracy Matters at UWM to engage students in the struggle to remove money from politics. Check out what Democracy Matters is doing on campus and see how you can help out by e-mailing milwaukeedemocracy@gmail.com.

Together we can reclaim our democracy from the corrupting influence of money in politics.

Daniel Ginsberg-Jaeckle

Campus Coordinator, Democracy Matters at UWM

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