The amount of big money that has flooded into political campaigns and super Political Action Committees (super PACS) since the Supreme Court’s narrow 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission in 2010 is downright obscene and it has resulted in the core of our democracy, elections, being dominated by very wealthy interests. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, in the 2024 Presidential campaign, three donors gave gargantuan donations to Pro-Donald Trump super PACS: banking heir Timothy Mellon donated $150 million, tech mogul Elon Musk donated $119 million, and casino owner Miriam Adelson donated $100 million. Pro-Democratic Candidate Kamala Harris super PACs received a $38 million donation from Dustin Moskovitz, from the tech industry, and $136 million from Future Forward USA Action, a nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors, of which $50 million has reportedly come from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. :
According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), campaign
spending has ballooned since 2008 mostly in the area of independent
expenditures. In 2008 independent expenditures amounted to $168.8 million with
about $1 billion spent by the Presidential candidates. In 2024 Presidential
candidates spent $1.8 billion, while independent expenditures amounted to $4.4
billion.
This explosion of big money in elections is undoubtedly having
a negative effect on our democracy, giving very wealthy interests undue
influence over elections. What can we do to limit the influence of money in
campaigns and elections and level the playing field for ordinary American
voters?
In a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce, the court “found a compelling
governmental interest in preventing ‘the corrosive and distorting effects of
immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the
corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public’s support
for the corporation’s political ideas.’” While that decision focused on corporate donations, the language also could easily
be applied to individual very wealthy donors. This ruling just goes to show
that the Supreme Court has before acknowledged a compelling governmental
interest to limit the anti-democratic influence of “immense aggregations of
wealth” in elections.
Already the FEC regulates the size of political donations to candidate’s campaigns, special PACs, and certain campaign committees. Individuals can only donate a total of $3,500 to a candidate’s campaign committee. However, in 2010 not long after the Citizens United decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in SpeechNow.org.v. FEC that limits on independent expenditures (super PACs) violated the First Amendment of the Constitution. The ruling found that, drawing on the opinion in Citizens United, “contributions to groups that make only independent expenditures cannot corrupt or create the appearance of corruption,” thereby clearing the way for super PACs to accept unlimited individual and corporate donations. However, corruption or the appearance of corruption is very different than the exercising of undue influence or the propagation of the grossly unequal speech that is possible with massive donations to a super PAC.
A 2023 Pew Research Center poll found that 72% of Americans think there should be limits on the amounts individuals and organizations can spend on political campaigns. And 80% think that the people who donated a lot of money to political campaigns have too much influence when it comes to the decisions that members of Congress make.
Last year, Representative Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) introduced
a bill in the House of Representatives, “The Free and Fair Elections Amendment,”
that proposes an amendment to the Constitution that would strictly limit
individual contributions to any effort to influence a candidate’s election to
the House, Senate, or Presidency to $100 and to a total of $1,000. The proposed
amendment would also bar corporations from donating to political campaigns and
would provide for public financing of candidates’ campaigns.
This would be done to “advance democratic self-government
and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the
electoral process.” This constitutional amendment would overrule the Citizens
United and SpeechNow.org rulings and would bring an end to unlimited
donations to super PACs.
Other past attempts at campaign finance reform have included a proposal to match donations 6-to-1 with public financing, similar to the current system in New York City. Now-Mayor Zohran Mamdani took advantage of this system for both his primary and general election campaigns for mayor. The current New York system matches donations up to $250 8-to-1 with public financing, and then-candidate Mamdani, who received many small donations to his campaign, eventually received the maximum $7 million in public financing. However, candidates can choose to opt-out of public financing, and if such a system were applied to federal elections, it still would not affect the unlimited donations to super PACS.
Since 2008, public financing of presidential campaigns has become disfavored by candidates: then-Presidential candidate Barak Obama refused $84 million in public funding of his campaign because he thought he could raise three times as much privately (His opponent, John McCain, did accept $84 million in public financing). Since then, Presidential Candidates raise so much private money for their campaigns and affiliated super PACs that they’re not interested in public funding. There is still a $3 check box on your federal tax return to donate to the Presidential Campaign Fund – but no Democrat or Republican candidate is taking advantage of it.
At the state level, Montana has put on its November 2026 ballot an initiative that would ban corporations, which are chartered by states,from donating to campaigns. If passed, the law would undercut the Citizens
United decision, but would still leave open massive individual
contributions by very wealthy people to super PACs.
Getting the obscene money out of elections will likely require
either a Constitutional Amendment or a new decision by the Supreme Court that
acknowledges the harm that big money, its undue influence, and the grossly
unequal speech it permits, imposes on American democracy. With the current
makeup of the Supreme Court, with six conservative justices, a new decision
that would overrule Citizens United and SpeechNow.org. v. FEC is
very unlikely. A Constitutional Amendment that significantly limits
super PAC donations by very wealthy individuals may be our last best hope to
get the influence of big money out of elections.
David Fine
Toledo, Ohio
Freelance Writer
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