Dear Editor:

I am appalled by the amount of money that is spent on political campaigns, and I’m outraged by the number of requests for donations that appear in my message box every day. With billionaires and trillionaires pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns for their favorite candidates throughout the country, we can hardly hope to compete with our little contributions. Yet, every day, the texts get more desperate.

Campaign financing has become really lopsided, with a few extravagantly rich individuals poised to commandeer our democracy for their own ends.

Once the midterms are over, I hope we can focus on meaningful change to campaign finance regulations — among the myriad other problems this country is facing. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a good chunk of the money that has been spent on these elections could have been put to useful purposes like healthcare and affordable housing, childcare and education! Perhaps, if these individuals were paying their fair share of taxes, those dreams could be realized. (But that’s a topic for another day.)

Christine Hopf-Lovette

Wiscasset