It is no secret that our political system is corrupted by the influence of corporate money in elections. Pick any issue - financial regulation, energy policy, healthcare reform - and its problems can be traced back to unspoken quid quo pro agreements between politicians and their campaign backers.
Polling on the issue is striking. Despite a fiercely partisan national climate, Americans agree across the board that limits should be set on money in politics. Following the landmark Supreme Court case that removed a bulk of those limits, Citizens United v. FEC (2010), a poll taken by ABC News/Washington Post revealed that eighty percent of Americans opposed the ruling. Seventy-two percent stated that they would support efforts by Congress to reinstate the restrictions that were stripped away by the decision.
Under Citizens United any meaningful legislative workaround would suffer the same fate of the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002, key portions of which were overturned by the Roberts Court. In fact, there now remains only one option for addressing America's campaign finance problem, and a galvanizing one at that: we must amend the Constitution.
Marge Baker: Overturning Citizens United: A Movement Moment
Polling on the issue is striking. Despite a fiercely partisan national climate, Americans agree across the board that limits should be set on money in politics. Following the landmark Supreme Court case that removed a bulk of those limits, Citizens United v. FEC (2010), a poll taken by ABC News/Washington Post revealed that eighty percent of Americans opposed the ruling. Seventy-two percent stated that they would support efforts by Congress to reinstate the restrictions that were stripped away by the decision.
Under Citizens United any meaningful legislative workaround would suffer the same fate of the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002, key portions of which were overturned by the Roberts Court. In fact, there now remains only one option for addressing America's campaign finance problem, and a galvanizing one at that: we must amend the Constitution.
Marge Baker: Overturning Citizens United: A Movement Moment