In California there is a measure, 89, designed to implement what is billed as "clean elections." It is very nearly an oxymoron, but never mind that.

The definition of a clean election is one in which a candidate chooses to run on state supplied funds alone. Even if the opponent chooses to run dirty, that is with outside funding from special interests, the state will attempt to supply matching funds to the clean candidate.

This ability to win elections without massive personal wealth and especially without special interest funding supposedly frees the elected official from onerous obligations to those interests that feel free to purchase the political mechanism. The elected official is free to pursue an agenda based on his own madness and that of his constituency.

So far, so good.

Although it is claimed that this measure enjoyed such massive popular support that it qualified to be on the ballot in record time, it is now reported to have the support of only 25% of the voters.

The question is; what changed their minds. (To forestall possible confusion, the term "minds" is here used as a courtesy, or as a convenient token to facilitate dialog and should not be taken seriously since it is not at all clear that the collective electorate has anything approaching intelligence.)

The trivial reason is that the initiators of the measure, which happens to be the ever trustworthy Nurses union, is suspected of harboring a secret agenda. This agenda is single payer health insurance. It is not much of a secret since the Nurses Union has openly said it supports a single payer health care system. Now, in those circles of the damned reserved for the stupid, the religious and the right wing, single payer health insurance is a great evil. It is evil principally because it might help someone whom God has not pre-ordained as worthy (such as immigrants or children or the poor or even the middle class), instead of giving the wealth to the already wealthy or using the funds to kill foreign children instead. Furthermore, the very fact that the Nurse would entertain a hidden agenda is considered too evil in and of itself in spite of the fact that there is nothing hidden about it.

This objection borders on such idiocy it hardly merits response. But it remains more than reason enough for the California electorate to reject a measure that could only be for their own good and vastly improve the quality of their lives. The deeper reason for such intellectual turnaround is that it will cost too much.

Now we are getting somewhere.

Clean elections have so far been outrageously successful in Arizona and in Maine. The fact that it works is not, apparently, a good enough reason to implement it in California. But since their populations are small relative to California's, the total expense for running clean elections is far less than the massive amount projected to run them in California. Being the mathematical whizzes that they are they have failed to note that even though the total expenses vary from state to state, the per capita expenses remain about the same. In fact, it is estimated to be something like $6 per taxpayer per year to run clean elections nationwide.

Not able to see more than a quarter move ahead, the average voter is not capable of noting the salient point that even though there is some trivial expense to running clean elections, one of the primary benefits is that it would probably save the nations hundreds of billions in government waste and in pork barrel spending, and possibly a greater amount would be saved by not passing legislation designed to bilk the American public of billions of dollars in wealth; insurance, health care, military, and pharmaceuticals come to mind.

But this is a level of thinking far too complex and far beyond the grasp of the American voter. And so, they want to cut off their political nose to spite their economic face.

The reason it will cost a voter six bucks a year to have clean elections is because any opponent is allowed to run funded by special interest money. This means that they can raise enormous war chests that stretch the ability of the state to match.

The obvious solution is that all candidates should be forced to either run clean on state money, or at least run on equal funds. This common sense solution is not possible because some right wing kangaroo court has declared that money is speech and to curtail a candidate's access to ridiculous amounts of dirty money is an infringement of free speech. This is ludicrous even to a cognitively challenged pigeon.

This hoax perpetrated on a semi-intelligent electorate has serious consequences. It is a license for the wealthy and for corporate and other special interests to buy the political process and circumvent democracy altogether. It is a positive feedback system wherein the powerful write laws for the powerful to become more powerful and the wealthy to control government so that the wealthy can become even more wealthy. None of this has the interests of the average citizen at heart.

The plain fact is that money is not speech. Money is money.

Money suppresses free speech in that only the wealthy are allowed to speak. For every word of speech bought by dirty money, millions are left mute and voiceless.

This is the ultimate oligarchic wet dream and goes hand in glove with the agendas of a fascist state. Power, both legal and militaristic, belong only to the wealthy.

This is not a state of political affairs that is likely to be corrected by the Supreme Court, who knows well that its bread is buttered oligarchic side up. The national electorate, in its typical lack of wisdom, its deficit of foresight and lacking even a hint of rudimentary intelligence, has voted in the fascists who packed the Supreme Court with crony fascists who will steadfastly refuse to consider the issue. Money will most likely remain speech for our lifetimes, or until the end of the American Republic; whichever comes first. There is democracy in action indeed.

That means that the only means for reclaiming the democratic process must rely on the efforts of local geopolitical entities such as states, counties and cities. Unfortunately, the process for dismantling corrupt democratic mechanisms must be implemented by means of the same corrupt democratic mechanisms. Something about foxes and hen houses comes to mind.

This is beginning to sound vaguely circular, positively ridiculous and seriously impossible; a circular conundrum designed for the express purpose of keeping corrupt democratic mechanisms safe from the electorate's whimsical ability to correct them. So much for measure 89.

In a real democracy the process would not be corrupted by oligarchic restrictions defining money as speech. In a real democracy such a definition would not be permitted. In a real democracy such a travesty would be correctable. Obviously, this is not a real democracy; but then, that painful fact has been all too obvious for all too long. Except, of course, to the electorate.

In order to correct the process, a real democracy would take public control of the media. The use of such a medium as television airwaves and cable access is granted, or licensed, to profit hungry corporations by body politic. The reason public media is public property is that no democracy can operate without freedom of media, including free speech, a free and independent press, freedom of information and free public access for democratic processes such as elections.

In short, qualified candidates should be granted free access to significant public media such as prime time television. This would automatically remove the single greatest expense of conducting an election campaign. This would automatically remove the corruption of money from the electoral process and by implication it would remove the corrupting influence of dirty money from the law-making process of a corrupted congress. Setting aside sheer bribery, of course. Like water, money will always seek the lowest level.

In order to reclaim democratic validity and functionality, a real democracy would implement IRV (Instant Recall Voting) elections or, at least, runoff elections. That would be an actual democratic process instead of elections rigged to ensconce some chosen candidate from our poorly disguised single party system.

In addition, in order to institute a free and fair democracy an honest attempt would be made to include significant third and even fourth or fifth parties. None of this is possible in a democracy that has gone beyond the point of no return in regard to its ability to recover its own democratic functionality.

Based on the assumption that the longest journey begins with a single step, clean elections is a fairly modest and doable first step, always provided there is enough intelligence left in the body politic to recognize what it needs to do for it own benefit and to further its own interests. Those opposed do not view clean elections as a first step, but as a slippery slope leading toward the reconstitution of an actual democracy; something too horrible to contemplate.

In short, a vote against clean elections is a vote to degrade your own interests in favor of the interests of oligarchs. In that case your vote does not count and your speech has just been drowned out by the screeching howl of money. No doubt the genius of the polls will decide the matter; dirty money will be confirmed as the determining factor in running the election process by an election run by dirty money.

No doubt they tell you that your vote counts. It is the first thing a scoundrel tells the mark.

Happy voting.

Michael Andrews is a poet, photographer, book artist, philosopher and author of several books including Riding South, In the Silence of the Gods, and The Place Where I Will Die.