One man/one vote is not equal to one man/with a pile of money

Our Courts have ruled that money is equal to free speech; that is to say, you have a right to use as much of it as you wish to accomplish your goals. If you want to spend a million dollars to run for Sheriff, go right ahead! If your opponents don't have that kind of money, that is tough!

It might be one man/one vote, but it is obvious that one man with a lot of money is going to talk a lot louder than another with $57.

A lout with a lot of money is going to have to be pretty bad to lose out to an ordinary person with good ideas and no cash.

It is a system that is an offense to fundamental democracy. The whole idea of one man/one vote is to put aside other human inequities--wealth, intelligence, skin color, religious preferences, or anything else--and to count the number of people who favor, or oppose, a proposition or an action.

Instead, we allow people with obscene amounts of money to shout very loudly, indeed. There is no pretense of a free exchange of ideas: there is, instead, a huge megaphone in the room.

It is beside the point that occasionally someone like Meg Whitman, of EBay fortune, who spent $142 million of her own money, actually loses a bid to be elected. It require that someone else, with almost as much money, mount a similarly expensive campaign.

The money is a huge advantage. Not having much money is a huge disadvantage.

It is lunacy to equate free speech with money.

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