This Holiday Season, Bond With Your Family Over Campaign Finance (Seriously)

The holidays are approaching which means it’s time to start picking up presents, brainstorming new year’s resolutions and, of course, thinking of ways to talk about the 2016 elections with your family without inciting a shouting match.

Here’s a suggestion: Talk about something that everyone agrees is a problem—money in politics.

New polling from Pew Research shows that 76 percent of both Democrats and Republicans believe money is playing a greater role in our elections that ever before, and that its impact is largely negative. Bipartisan super majorities on both sides of aisle agree that the high cost of elections discourages good candidates from running.

It turns out that there’s also some bipartisan agreement about what to do about problem as well. A new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows that 78 percent of Democrats and Republicans favor making a requirement that all donors names be made public. Transparency is a great start, and there are plenty of reforms already in place for state and local elections that we could replicate on the federal level.

So whether you’ve got a wacky uncle or an angry aunt or a grandparent without a filter, there’s a good chance they’ll all agree that excessive money is distorting our politics. And once you’ve bonded over that (and maybe some dessert), be sure to tell them that this is problem that we can fix.