We’ve been living with the Citizen’s United decision for two years now, and the results have been every bit as bad as I imagined on that Thursday in January, 2010, when I first heard it on the radio. Untraceable corporate money has swollen the new ‘Super-PACs’, and we are left to wonder who is trying to hijack our elections. I mean, we KNOW who, in general, but we can’t prove it.
What can we do about it? We can’t fully reverse the effects of Citizen’s United without either waiting for a new US Supreme Court majority, and then a case on which they would be willing to reverse themselves, or a Federal Constitutional Amendment declaring that money is not speech, and not protected by the First Amendment. Move to Amend has been promoting the latter approach, and while I’m all for it, it is a project of years, requiring a change in the way conservative voters in red states see the world to ever become part of the Constitution.
Today, I got an email from Jocelyn Benson announcing the Corporate Accountability Amendment, a proposed amendment to the Michigan Constitution. The one thing that Citizen’s United does allow states to do is to require that political advertising disclose its funding sources. And that is what the CAA does. If it passes, it would not mean that corporations still cannot attempt to buy our elections. It just means that if they support unpopular legislation or candidates, they must risk citizen and consumer backlash. Transparency is not everything — but it would be a big step forward.