Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

3 April 2014

McCutcheon v. FEC, continued

I’m not as pessimistic as Thomas Mann, Emily Bazelon, or Rick Hasen, but I’m under no illusions that Chief Justice Roberts’ decision advances the cause of campaign finance reform.

Nor am I under any illusion that we’re ready to take the cure — a constitutional amendment requiring public financing of campaigns, and limiting the amount a person may spend on an election — anytime soon.

There are several reasons why:

  1. Republicans and the rich, generally one and the same, know that their one political advantage is big money, and they’ll fight like a cornered velociraptor to keep it.

  2. Americans are not of one mind on the subject. They oppose a system that lets the rich buy elections. But they also oppose a system that limits the size of the megaphone a person can buy because they see that as an impermissible restraint on free speech.

  3. Writing a constitutional amendment that requires full and fair public financing of elections without doing damage to the First Amendment is hard, and harder than many think.

  4. Campaign finance reform alone won’t be enough to remove the defects in our political system.

That last point deserves further discussion. Thanks to the compromise at the Constitutional Convention that gave each state two Senators, half of today’s senators come from 25 states that together contain only 16.3 percent of the population (download spreadsheet). The Connecticut Compromise, so loved by K–12 history and civics teachers, rescued the Constitution. Now, more than 200 years later, we must rescue the Constitution from the Connecticut Compromise. The Senate must be based on one man, one vote, if Congress is to truly operate on the principle of majority rule.

To campaign finance reform and one man, one vote in the Senate, I would add direct election of the President, and a nonpartisan national elections service to administer all elections — including, especially including, state and local elections, all the way down to second assistant dogcatcher — in a fair and uniform manner.