I hear it everywhere – there’s just too much friggin money in politics. So far this election season there has been over $3.4 Billion for both party’s races. The super rich and corporate spending is imposing a distorting influence upon us. Elon Musk alone donated $290 million in the 2023-24 election season and has upped his 2025-26 largess to $366 million and counting! If we could only overturn Citizens United we could make things better.

While much of this is true, the diagnosis misses the point. The real problem is the effect of outside money on the nature of our representative democracy. Yes, too much money is distorting our political landscape, but it’s the distortion of disproportional money and the concentration of political power that has shaped an electorate that is detached from its representatives. The power elite is selecting the voters rather than the voters selecting their representatives. And that spells a bad day for constitutional democracy. What’s the solution?

Here are three ideas which taken together can make a difference.

First, as to money, Citizens United held that corporations and unions are persons entitled to First Amendment protection of free speech. All we need to do is apply the same donation limits that any other person must adhere to – this year its about $3500 for the primary and the same for the general. This is consistent with the concept of one person, one vote. Congress can enact a law defining the maximum individual contribution for all persons, including corporate, PAC, union and so forth on equal footing. Elon Musk and the other ultra rich and have the same First Amendment voice as Joe Sixpack and that seems in harmony with the Founders’ intent.

Second, no one should be able to donate to a candidate for which they are unable to vote. This is a vitally important to restoring representative democracy. We’ve seen corporate, PAC and grass roots donations pour into swing states, distorting the candidate pool to conform to the ideals of the outside donors at the expense of local sentiments. It casts national priorities over local needs and denies true local representation. We need to return the power to the people who live there to decide who they want to be their voice in government.

Finally, modern technology has harnessed voter statistics enabling computers to draw voting districts to predictably achieve select outcomes. The Gerrymanderers are controlling the demographics of voters, rather than enabling real communities to express their values and preferences. Voting districts should be required to contain entire communities rather than splitting blocks and other side of tracks or rivers to achieve the

result of power brokers. Voting should reflect the majority opinions of whole real communities who are sending their representatives to be their voice.

These three things won’t solve all of our problems, but they would be a good start at sending true representatives to do the “people’s work.” Politicians of both parties will hate this. And that’s probably a good enough reason to implement it. But it will take a movement to enact these simple steps as the entrenched power brokers will not want to yield. They simply don’t trust the people to choose wisely. In this writer’s opinion, any person who would represent the people and doesn’t trust them, should not rise to office. There are a lot of well-meaning and smart people who can find solutions and provide for the common good, but the current system increasingly feeds itself at our expense. It’s time to get back to basics and let the voters choose their representatives and not the other way around. Our Constitution is an amazing idea. Let it guide us back to the representative democracy created through its design. As Ben Franklin said once our Constitution had been signed, “We have a Republic, if we can keep it!”