[ncphil]

Something many have advocated for decades. But keep in mind that there are tens of thousands of elected offices in the US, most of them nonpartisan, local positions that cost little to contest: yet it's incredibly hard to find people willing to run. Voter apathy is a huge problem here, in part due to historic voter suppression efforts baked into the system, but the dearth of candidates willing to participate in elections is even more serious. There again, legal discouragements, especially in the most significant races (state and federal legislature, executive), are endemic. Still, too many offices at the local level (town and city council, special district boards) go uncontested: leaving one or the other major party -- or venal representatives of the FIRE sector -- in control to mismanage and misappropriate power in areas directly impacting public life.

[ghaff]

Many of those local or state offices also pay little to nothing. A state rep in NH gets paid $200 for a two-year term based on an 1899 law.

That's something of an outlier but $25-50K is common.