Michael McKnight's Oct. 14 column regarding campaign finance reform highlighted a key shortfall in McCain/Feingold -- that the elimination of soft money contributions does not mean that wealthy individuals do not still have the greater political voice.
While McKnight uses this shortfall to write off the effectiveness of campaign finance reform entirely, I see it is clear example of why we need more dramatic reform of our campaign finance system.
Public financing would give candidates the option to run without the burden or raising large private donations.
Gov. Mike Easley signed a bill Oct. 10 that creates a system of public financing for judicial races here in North Carolina. This bold move needs to be extended to all races.
The option of public financing opens up the system so that all sorts of folks have a chance to run -- not just the "home-grown" likes of Elizabeth Dole and Erskine Bowles.
Tara Purohit
Senior
Linguistics
