Wealthy donors have always had an outsized influence in our democracy, but misguided jurisprudence, like the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, has opened the floodgates for mega donations and corporate spending in our elections.

Spending on political races has skyrocketed, and running for office has never been more expensive. The 2016 election cycle was the most expensive in U.S. history with almost $6.5 billion spent. As a result, unless candidates are independently wealthy, they often need to court contributions from mega-donors or corporate interests to be competitive in their races.

This gives a very small number of people massive influence on who runs for office and, often, what issues they decide to talk about. In 2016, fewer than 400 families gave more than half of all of the money raised in the presidential race. That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work. Our democracy is supposed to be based on the principle of one person, one vote.

Ultimately, we need to overturn Citizens United and make other systemic changes if we want to get big money out of our elections. But large-scale changes like these take time, public pressure, and elected leaders who are committed to making it happen. That’s why we’re researching and advocating for small donor empowerment programs, that will bring power back to the people.

These programs match contributions of ordinary people with public funds. Candidates access these funds when they opt into the program and refuse to take large and corporate contributions. This means anyone with enough public support can run for office, those candidates can raise enough money to be competitive, and they will be answerable to their constituents, not a handful of mega-donors and corporations.

Denver is one of 29 cities, states and counties across the country with small donor matching systems. In November, Denver residents voted to approve a new campaign finance system that candidates can opt-in to that would allow participants to run for office fueled by small donations and average voters. The measure improves upon the previous Democracy for the People measure that will be pulled from the ballot by proponents. The reform that Denver City Council approved, and voters will see on their ballot in November, would make three major changes:

1. Lower contribution limits by two thirds to be more in line with other offices in Colorado.

2. Eliminate direct business contributions to candidates and create a committee system that mirrors other races in Colorado including creating small donor committees that take in small donations.

3. Create a new small donor empowerment program that candidates can opt-in to that would match any small donation of $50 or less with a 9 to 1 public match. Only candidates that have generated a certain number of contributions and thus demonstrated public support are eligible for the system. All unused public matching dollars are returned to the fund after the election.