The most difficult thing about congressional campaign finance reform these days is getting a vote on the issue. Leaders in both houses, knowing how popular the reform measure is, have tried for months to keep it bottled up.

But in the Senate today there should be an opportunity to end a filibuster on a significant, bipartisan reform bill. Maine’s senators should vote for cloture and in favor of the bill.

The campaign funding system grows more corrupt with time. “Soft money,” huge amounts of money given to political parties ostensibly for party costs, is funneled to candidates as never before. Political action committees are increasingly brazen about buying congressional votes.

The reform bill is sponsored by Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Fred Thompson of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin. Under the bill, candidates who voluteer to stay under the spending limits would benefit from discounts for television advertisements and mailings. (In Maine the limits would be $1.6 million in a Senate race and $600,00 in a House race.) Bundling of campaign contributions, soft money and PACs would be banned. Incumbents would be restricted from using the congressional free-postage privilege during an election year.

Sixty votes are required to end discussion on the bill and subject it to a vote. The Senate’s 48 Democrats are likely to vote this way as are the handful of Republicans who co-sponsored the measure with Sens. McCain, Thompson and Feingold. The measure will need another four or five Republicans, and that makes the votes of GOP moderate Sens. William Cohen and Olympia Snowe extremely important.

Sen. Cohen supported cloture and voted in favor of a similar bill in 1993. That bill eventually was rejected after being mangled by the House-Senate conference. Sen. Snowe as a representative supported campaign finance reform measures. President Bill Clinton has said he would sign the measure once it passed Congress.

Support from Maine’s senators for this reform could make the difference between this bill moving forward or being put off yet again. As campaigns grow more outlandishly expensive, and candidates who are not millionaires are forced to spend more and more time raising funds, the system can’t wait much longer.