The Liberal Bias: Money Talks, Constitutionality Walks

On April 2, 2014, the Supreme Court decided in favor of Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama businessman. The decision effectively erases limits that an individual can donate to a political campaign. This new decision gives more leniency to the wealthier citizens to influence a candidate in a similar way that the 2010 Citizens United decision gave more leniency to corporations who wanted to influence political candidates.

I really do have to stress the “wealthier” part in this decision, and the Shaun McCutcheon isn’t even a source of my concern in this decision. McCutcheon gave $16,250 to the Alabama Republican Party in 2012. All told, he was responsible for about 3 percent of the contributions the party received that year. As far as being a power house of political manipulation, McCutcheon is not a key player.

He did, however, leave the door wide open for the wealthiest Americans to give as much as they want and hide under the newly expanded first amendment protections. I’m normally not one to side for stricter first amendment guidelines, but we are not talking about actual speech here. What we are talking about is a scenario where a rich person (say a David Koch or even a George Soros) can now give an insanely large amount of money to a politician and imply that if that politician wants the same contributions the next time then they had best vote for things the contributors like.

Those who are in favor of both of these campaign finance decisions argue that the rich have a right to donate as much as they want as a mode of free speech. The problem is that when you use money as a form of free speech there is a fine line between self-expression and bribery. If I walk up to a senator and tell him I’ll give him a million dollars to vote no on a bill, then I would be bribing him. If I donate to his campaign and make it publicly known I’m in favor of policies and I’m hoping for a “no” vote on a bill, then I’m just expressing myself. Do you see where things get murky?

Before the decision, an individual had limits on how much they could donate to a particular candidate in a single, or two year period. An individual could also donate to Political Action Committees as long as their total contributions did not go over $123,200 total. The Citizens United decision opened doors for contributions that corporations could donate to. Now, an individual could double down on their bets by donating through their corporations and then individually matching their donations if they have the money. Some people do have the money.

It isn’t all bad though. We just have to keep a closer eye on who we are voting for now. We’ll have to keep tabs on who is contributing their campaigns. We’ll have to keep a careful eye on how their opinions on matters change over time and see how radical of a change they’ve made. We’ll have to keep an eye on how they vote after they get into office. We’ll have to keep track of how they act when they run for re-election.

Thankfully we live in a country where every voter is well informed and in no way swayed by misinformation.