Concern over money's infiltration of our electoral process transcends party boundaries as this article in the Register Herald about efforts to pass a Clean Elections bill in West Virginia shows. Democratic and Republican legislators alike know that a full public financing alternative is the best way to put that state on the road to more inclusive elections and better policy.

Hope for a better system more responsive to voters is bipartisan:

“I’m not so sure big money taints the system,” says Delegate Cliff Moore, D-McDowell, one of 11 sponsors in the House of Delegates.


“I just think it makes people a lot less prone to do the right thing. If that’s a definition of ‘taint,’ then I guess it does.”

Moore, like many supporting the bill, simply wants to change the process.

“I think it’s past time that this country migrates to a new system of the electoral process,” he said.

“I think the closer we can get to making the elections clean, the better off I think we’re going to be as lawmakers and the better off we’re going to be as a voting public.”

[. . .]

For years, former Senate Minority Leader Vic Sprouse, R-Kanawha, has been an advocate of the idea.

[. . .]

“I don’t know if it’s a perfect way, but to me, it’s the best way that’s been presented to try somehow get a handle on the absurdity that money is in the political process.”