Personally, I would not like to see elections be publicly funded.  There is already too much room for corruption in regards to fair and valid elections, and government funding/intrusion would most likely result in more corruption.  Just look at how difficult it is and has been for decades to find out where taxpayer dollars are going.  It would be too easy for one politician (who is in charge of spending the taxpayer's money) to funnel funding to one candidate over another.

While there certainly are problems with the current situation, Americans still choose for whom they vote.  While one candidate might have a significant amount of money to fund his campaign and, thus, more publicity, the voter still goes to the ballot box himself and make his or her choice based on a variety of factors.  No matter where the funding comes from for various candidates, voters should not be affected. Those who choose to vote for someone based on superfluous reasons will most likely continue to do so again.  Those who vote for a candidate based on his or her research on those candidates will also not be affected by the source of the funding. 

Whoo, boy, I do believe I can think of a few thousand (or more) ways that our tax dollars can be used than to save our dishonest politicians money from their own pockets. Can you imagine public dollars financing the Presidential campaigns of the two George Bushes? They are wealthy beyond belief. The same can be said of most local, state and national politicians. With so many people out of work, poverty levels escalating, and states running on deficit budgets, how can such an idea even be considered? I look forward to seeing others' opinions about this. 

Personally, I do not buy the argument that public financing would take away people's ability to have a political voice.

If two people are running for office and one of them has the better ideas, it seems that that person would be able to attract the most support if both of them had the same amount of money to spend.  I think that allowing unlimited spending for or against a candidate (as the recent Supreme Court case does) simply allows (potentially) the candidate who is favored by the most rich people to drown out the message of the other candidate.

To me, that is the equivalent of saying that one candidate should be able to buy a huge bullhorn and yell whenever the other candidate is talking.  It's like saying that whoever yells louder has the better message.

However, the people who would have to vote for a law instituting public financing are the same ones who have been elected under our current system and are likely to think that it is good.  This makes it highly unlikely we'll ever see public financing.  In addition, the recent Court ruling makes it impossible to say corporations and people can't spend as much of their money as they want on ads.  So it's just not happening.