Government: A Better Path to Campaign-Finance Reform

As the Obama campaign showed, the Internet has created a potential for massive funding of campaigns by small contributors. There aren't many Obamas, but other candidates can be motivated to seek out such contributors through legislation providing public matching funds for small contributions.

Malbin's model is the New York City system, with a 6-to-1 match for the first $175 of any contribution, making it worth $1,225 to the candidate.

With that kind of payoff, he says, candidates would have every reason to go after small contributors -- and pay less attention to the fat cats. And with a flood of such "clean" money, the dollars that corporations and unions decide to spend in the game would become relatively less important.

For more, see A Better Path to Campaign-Finance Reform by David S. Broder, June 24, 2010, at washingtonpost.com.