At times like this, the reason for voter apathy becomes clear.

It's hard for voters to believe they hold the reins of political power when campaign spending laws are so easily muddled and misunderstood. A simpler, voter-enabled system of election financing is looking better every day.

Even the state Campaign Spending Commission is unclear on what to do with complaints that at least three politicians may have violated a law, given that its language is confusing. The law's intent was to keep campaign funding local by barring out-of-state contributions exceeding 20 percent of a candidate's campaign fund, but its wording suggests it applies only to individual contributions.

The commission has suspended enforcing the law, citing also the need for a legal opinion.

All of this is confounded further by partisan politics: The law was seen as a way to constrain fund-raising by Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, but it's not being enforced against Democrats now.

Given all this, it's easy to see why people are heaving a disgusted sigh and holding their nose when they go to the polls, if they go at all. How can politicians do any real work while arguing endlessly about fund-raising? It's possible to fix the language in the law, of course; yet that seems like putting a Band-Aid on a festering sore.

Rather than simply throwing up our hands as voters, why not throw out the whole campaign-funding system? Voter-Owned Hawai'i has been pushing for a public fund accessible to campaigns that meet requirements for grassroots support. It's clearly going to need to be phased in, but our lawmakers, vested in the status quo, have resisted giving it even a fair trial.

Voters elsewhere have succeeded at pushing through this reform, partly because those states have voter initiative procedures for getting measures on the ballot. But another important component of success is building a groundswell of support, and that's part of what put public-funded elections over the top in Connecticut, the most recent state to adopt this approach.

Voter-Owned Hawai'i is building on this strategy and is inviting voters to get involved (see box). Politicians are driven by public pressure and can be persuaded — if they can see that their own re-election might hinge on their support of public campaign funding.