"Taxpayers might be the real culprits here. The percentage of taxpayers who’ve checked the box on their returns that directs $3 to the Treasury to fund presidential campaigns at no cost to themselves dwindled to a mere 7.3 percent in 2009. Even at its high-water mark in 1980, taxpayer support for public financing was only 28.7 percent. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has introduced a companion repeal bill in the Senate, called the taxpayer checkoff “perhaps the largest poll taken in the country every year.”"
Who Killed Public Financing? Taxpayers.
NationalJournal.com:
