According to LetsFreeCongress.com in the 2012 US House elections, 95 percent of the candidates that outspent their opponents won, while 1 percent of the donors contributed 68 percent of the campaign funding.

For example, spending by California billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer helped elect Democrat Terry McAuliffe as governor of Virginia and helped sway California voters on legislative elections and ballot initiatives.

Closer to home, attack ads financed by Charles and David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity in 2010 helped unseat Democrats Randy Gordon and Eric Oemig from the Washington state Senate in close races in the 41st and 45th legislative districts, replacing them with Republicans Steve Litzow and Andy Hill.

We need to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that treats money as speech and we need public financing of campaigns so that wealthy donors can’t buy elections.

Donald Smith, Bellevue