Reduce Special Interests
(because elimination is impractical)

What is a special interest?

Everyone has an interest in government, every one of us! Our government creates our laws, sets our taxes, limits our use of our property, all in the name of balancing our rights and obligations with those of our neighbors. Our government is us! Since our political process determines our government, everyone should have an interest in politics. Yet many of our neighbors have no interest in politics. Many have become disillusioned by what appears to be a broken and unfixable process.

A special interest is a group of individuals who wield more power than their numbers (or percentage of voters) would otherwise allow. In other words, special interests are the same as the rest of us, but they have more influence on government than they should if you looked only at their numbers. In a political process that is dominated by money and fundraising, this is more money paid by a small group than can be raised by a (possibly much) larger group.

The other part of defining a special interest relates to which issue(s) they address. If 5,000 trial attorneys in California spend $5 million on healthcare politics and 65,000 doctors raise $2 million for healthcare politics, which one is the special interest? Probably both; we haven't looked at how much money was raised by the 7 million people who are uninsured in California. Each of these groups has an interest in healthcare issues.

Since we all care about the results, and a special interest is a smaller group with a louder voice, how do we return each to a "one person, one vote" level of influence? Society is a constantly changing environment, but as we exist today, there are two primary factors which support the continuation of special interests:

• more money collected and spent means a louder voice, and
• most of 'the People' choose not to speak up.