Thursday, April 3, 2014

Wealthy people aren’t entitled to excess political clout


The Supreme Court is giving the keys to the ballot box to Sheldon Adelson and immensely wealthy folks like him.


Yesterday conservative justices on the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that our current campaign finance law cannot limit the total amount of cash that a single person can give to political campaigns and PACs. They used a deliberately narrow definition of “corruption” to justify this dangerous change in the law of the land.

Let’s avoid simply saying “it’s not fair” or “it’s a free speech issue” when a very wealthy person can spend millions and millions and millions to change the outcome of an election, whether it’s an election for local sheriff or for president of the United States.

In my mind, the issue is not “fairness” or “free speech.”


The issue is: allowing a single wealthy person to spend tens or hundreds of millions—to buy an election—cannot be a reasonable fundamental principle of the electoral structure of a democracy.

If a single wealthy person can spend as much money as 100,000 or 1,000,000 voters can spend to support the election of their favored candidates, then there can be no reasonable meaning for the bedrock democratic concept of “one man, one vote.”

We need to demand that our state and national legislators take back control of reasonable campaign finance regulations.

Sheldon Adelson and immensely wealthy folks like him should not be able to buy the keys to the ballot box.


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