As pundits continue to pontificate about the low voter turnout last Tuesday, the state legislature meets today to consider whether or not to override Governor Rell’s veto of their fix to Connecticut’s Citizens’ Election Program. As I was reading Matt Zagaja’s Primary Post-Mortem on DeliberateCT it struck me: perhaps voter turnout is inversely correlated to campaign spending.

There are plenty of reasons why spending more money on campaigns might decrease voter turnout. A popular reason in this area is negative advertising. Negative advertising is often cited as a cause of decreased voter turnout, and in some cases that may even be the goal of the negative advertising campaign. Related to this is the idea of election fatigue. As people’s mailboxes, telephones and TVs get bombarded with messages from the candidates, voters simply get tired of it all and don’t even bother voting.

Yet perhaps the issue is a little deeper. Massive campaign spending is anti-democratic. Our republic is supposed to be a representative democracy. We are supposed to elect officials to represent us in public office. To represent someone, you need to listen to them. You need to hear their concerns. Voters just may feel that the candidate that spends $50 million dollars to tell you what she believes isn’t listening to you, the same way some voters feel that current elected officials just aren’t listening.

There is also the aspect of fiscal responsibility. Voters may feel uncomfortable giving control of the governmental purse strings to people that spend millions of dollars of their own money to get elected. Are these really the people that best understand what it means to stay on a tight budget?

Our political system has become too much of a media show. It is not about intelligent discourse, it is about winning over viewers and getting them to buy a product. The product is the candidate and the purchase is made in the voting booth. People don’t want to buy political products. They want representation. So, they just stay home.

An issue in the Citizens’ Election Program is whether or not ‘triggers’ are constitutional. Triggers are when a self-funded candidate exceeds some threshold. This triggers the Citizens’ Election Program to provide additional funds to candidates participating in the program. The courts have held that this is unconstitutional because it could have a chilling effect on the ultra-wealthy person’s desire to spend unlimited funds. In fact, the courts appear to have it completely backwards. It is the ultra-wealthy person’s excessive expenditures that has a chilling effect on the more fundamental aspect of free speech, people going to the polls and casting their votes.

The fix to the Citizens’ Election Program is an imperfect fix. However, it is probably the best we can get as long as judges believe that the ability to spend unlimited funds on campaigns is of greater importance than voter turnout.