Here's an early look at an investigative report by Mike Nichols in the upcoming edition of Wisconsin Interest (a journal which I happen to edit.) Mike takes a detailed look at Wisconsin attempt at public campaign financing and deems it a colossal flop.

The fund is, in the words of one elections observer, “dead as a doornail.” Legislators recently voted to fund Supreme Court races through a new “Democracy Trust Fund,” but the separate fund set up in 1977 still exists for everybody else, and dozens of candidates still take the taxpayer money.

Yet it does nothing to limit spending or promote competition and little, at best, to limit special interest involvement.

Thirty years after Schreiber’s paean to publicly financed campaigns, the fund hasn’t just failed to live up to its authors’ vision. It has, in fundamental ways, helped undermine it.
 

In other words: sounded good, well-intentioned, but in practice a complete failure. A fitting epitaph for most all campaign finance "reform," including McCain-Feingold.