"louder voices softer"

Editor,
Democracy, by allocating one vote to each citizen, provides every individual with an equal voice in the political decision-making process. Access to the ballot box is not a business. People with more money do not have the opportunity to buy more of it than people with less.

Political campaigning, as interpreted by the corporate powers who control the American government, is a business. So sophistic arguments to the effect that money equals speech sound reasonable in that context. But exposure of candidates to the voting public, if it is democratic, is not a business. It is a service, distributed fairly and equally on the basis of equality of citizenship, not unfairly and unequally on the basis of inequality of wealth, by a democratic government.

Money's controlling political campaigning in the U.S.A. works the same way as gerrymandering districts does: it gives the rich and the powerful an unfair, undemocratic advantage over their fellow citizens. Naturally, the rich balk at the idea of sharing power with their financially inferior neighbors, so we have the system we have. That it's a fact does not make it right.