Vote reform is needed

To the editor:

The key to making progress on the issues that matter most to New Yorkers is unrigging our political system.

For far too long, corporate and big money interests have held an outsized influence over candidates and elected officials.

But this year, there is a historic opportunity to change that.

The New York state legislature recently created the Public Campaign Financing Commission, a nine-member body that is tasked with recommending campaign finance reforms that will probably become law.

We need the members of the commission — Mylan Denerstein, Jay Jacobs, DeNora Getachew, John Nonna, Rosanna Vargas, Crystal Rodriguez, Henry Berger, David Previte and Kimberly Galvin — to take their mandate seriously and recommend changes that will make candidates and elected officials beholden to regular voters.

Specifically, I urge the commission to lower the cap on campaign contributions and create a small-dollar matching system, which would increase the power of small donations by matching them 6-to-1.

We need our politicians to depend on small donors to secure funds, not corporations and the top 1 percent.

Alfred Kaiser

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