Over the past few months, braving the cold and the rain, a number of us have stood at the polls and the post office gathering over 1,000 signatures on a petition asking the Brunswick Town Council to join a growing movement that urges Congress to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.

The 2010 decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, gave rise to the Super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited money from individuals, corporations and nonprofit organizations to support or oppose candidates, as long as they do not coordinate directly.

Super PAC spending corrupts our political system, weakens political debate and marginalizes voters. Instead of a democracy based on the concept “of the people, by the people and for the people,” Super PACs allow a relatively few super-rich individuals and corporations to have a huge and inappropriate influence over elections.

Super PACs translate economic success into political power, corrupting the “one person, one vote” principle upon which our electoral process is based.

The end result of these brutal campaigns is an electorate that is poorly informed at best and demoralized to the point of nonparticipation at worst, represented by politicians beholden to donors who must spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising and campaigning instead of doing the important work we elected them to do.

We need a constitutional amendment that allows us to regulate the raising and spending of campaign funds and to stop the unlimited flow of secret money into our democracy.

On Monday, the Brunswick Town Council is scheduled to consider the issue.

Our councilors need to hear from the citizens of Brunswick.

Please call your town councilor and tell him or her you want Brunswick to join two dozen other towns in Maine with similar resolutions.

And please plan to attend the Town Council meeting to support the resolution. Meetings start at 7 p.m.

SELMA STERNLIEB, a member of Occupy Maine Bath-Brunswick, lives in Brunswick.