Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard law professor and political activist, has made reforming America’s system of financing political campaigns the centerpiece of his work over the past eight years. In 2011, Lessig founded Rootstrikers, an organization dedicated to changing the influence of money in the U.S. Congress. At Quartz’s Next Billion conference in London on Tuesday (May 19), Lessig used three charts to show how the enormous amounts of money contributed by rich people and special interest groups to political candidates in America is corrupting its democracy and failing its citizens.
The charts draw on data culled from a 2014 Princeton study that focused on how government policy changes correlate with the average citizen’s interest.