LETTER: Enough with the dark money ad campaigns

To the editor:

On Nov. 8, the Town of Bartelme in northwest Shawano County held a referendum to weigh in on the Wisconsin United to Amend question calling for a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to once and for all disallow corporations, unions, Super PACs and others from making unlimited contributions to political campaigns.

The same question has been posed 167 times previously in WIUTA referendums and resolutions in Wisconsin. It passed with an 88.8% approval in Bartelme, giving the WIUTA initiative a 168 wins, zero losses record in the state, and now represents over half the state population on the issue.

Ironically, the midterm elections also set a record for campaign spending totaling $16.7 billion nationwide. That’s more money than any previous election in world history, including every previous presidential election. The most amazing thing? With few exceptions, all that money simply maintained the status quo by returning incumbents to their preordained gerrymandered outcomes.

The Wisconsin United to Amend effort, like the other 22 states that have already called for the constitutional amendment, compares its nonprofit grassroots bottom-up populist effort to the ground swell for women’s suffrage that occurred in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Women’s suffrage in America began in Seneca Falls, New York, July 1848. It took 70-plus years to come to fruition with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919. The 19th Amendment is 39 words long and takes less than a minute to read. It took over 70 years to simply agree that women get to vote, same as men. When viewed from today’s perspective, it’s hard to comprehend why or how it could take so long to pass such a basic, fundamental right.

With the unprecedented record-breaking spending spree that each new election cycle digresses into — complete with non-stop, back-to-back, fact-check-immune negative ads sponsored by dark money Super Pacs — it’s impossible to fathom what our elections will look like in another decade or two, let alone 70 years and whether our citizens can or will be able to make wise choices through the thickening smoke screens, distracting noises and intentional disinformation.

The vast majority of people agree with the voters in Bartelme. It’s really just a matter of getting our elected officials to agree with us — to forsake the allure of special-interest money and all the strings that come entangled with it — strings that profit them, always at our expense.

Steve Parks, Bowler