Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

National upheaval is the time for doubling down on the campaign finance cure

money in politics
Dave Palmer
Palmer is a public interest attorney who ran Fair Elections for New York, a campaign that won passage of the state's new public campaign financing program in April.

The tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic, and the most recent high-profile killings of Black people by police, have laid bare America's biggest policy shortcomings and inequities. A growing number of voices are correctly arguing that our shared dream of returning to normal must be about a new normal — one providing everyone, not just the few who are wealthy and white, with real economic and health security.

However obvious the wake-up calls of Covid-19 and renewed demands for racial equity may seem, they will not change the political playbook of wealthy interests — and policy change won't come easy. Remember when the bailed-out banks that caused the 2008 economic crash turned around and spent record sums to weaken the regulations needed to prevent another collapse? That's the world we live in.

To build the new normal, we must eliminate a key structural barrier to achieving the policies we need: the undue influence of big money in our politics. These days, it seems almost everyone understands this. We just need to double down on addressing it, as called for most recently by the bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship.

Since the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, the Supreme Court has equated money with speech under the First Amendment. The problem with this interpretation is that it favors the political speech of those who give big political donations, silencing the rest of us.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The infamous Citizens United v. FEC decision a decade ago, among others, only made matters worse. The court now effectively prohibits the best solutions to combating big money's power, including election spending limits.

A federal public campaign financing program would help a lot, and Congress should act when it can. But it's also an incomplete solution in a world where unlimited money can be used to influence the electoral process. While it's much better than nothing, that cannot be America's standard for the functioning of our democracy.

What we ultimately need, if we hope to shift political power to everyday people to the degree necessary, is a 28th Amendment to the Constitution — one enabling more robust state and federal regulation of the financing of political campaigns.

As a nation we value the concept of "one person, one vote," yet the Supreme Court has told us that political equality is somehow off limits when it comes to how elections are funded. History suggests we shouldn't wait for the court to change its mind. In the 45 years after its decision denying women the right to vote, and before ratification of the 19th Amendment 100 years ago guaranteeing women that same right, 25 justices were replaced.

A change in the Constitution, like democracy itself, won't by itself bring us to a promised land of political and racial equality. But it would unquestionably open up to voters and lawmakers a much broader range of tools for eliminating today's loopholes, and the other vulnerabilities in the system that wealthy interests will surely discover and exploit tomorrow.

From there, we could look forward to more diversity in our legislatures, more political power for people with low and middle incomes — and, in turn, more laws that address racial inequity. This is why the Movement for Black Lives calls for a campaign finance constitutional amendment and public election financing in its policy platform.

Promoting a 28th Amendment should have been at the top of President Trump's agenda. The blurry line between criminal bribery and political giving is a big part of creating the swamp that both parties claim they hope to drain.

As a senator from Delaware back in 1997, Joe Biden called the Supreme Court's Buckley ruling "supremely wrong" and declared that "the single most important thing that has to be done from a purely practical sense is to amend the Constitution." Such an amendment is now at the top of his presidential campaign's political reform platform. Should he win, Biden must declare its realization a national imperative.

Ultimately, though, hope rests with us. As this moment makes clear, people must organize for the change we need. There's been substantial progress in Congress and in the states but we're still short of the necessary two-thirds support from Congress — as well as the three-fourths of state legislatures, who would be called on to ratify the new constitutional language if Congress acts.

The suffragists and abolitionists of yesteryear didn't give up when they didn't have the votes; they ramped up. Movements change political dynamics.

The effort to win a constitutional amendment is a rare opportunity to unite Americans no matter our home states, birthplaces, skin color, political party or faith. A majority of Americans — Democrats, Republicans and independents alike — support an amendment. They just need to be activated.

Money's hold over policymaking remains at the root of many of our most pressing problems, and the Supreme Court has locked the toolbox of most-effective solutions. Like combatting racism, fighting for better wages and working conditions, and addressing the climate crisis, we simply must have this fight. And winning a campaign finance amendment would help deliver wins on those other issues.

The policy failures brought to light by the pandemic, and by black and brown voices in the streets, are the call to get this amendment over the finish line.

Read More

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump
text
Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump

Donald Trump wasted no time when he returned to the White House. Within hours, he signed over 200 executive orders, rapidly dismantling years of policy and consolidating control with the stroke of a pen. But the frenzy of reversals was only the surface. Beneath it lies a deeper, more troubling transformation: presidential elections have become all-or-nothing battles, where the victor rewrites the rules of government and the loser’s agenda is annihilated.

And it’s not just the orders. Trump’s second term has unleashed sweeping deportations, the purging of federal agencies, and a direct assault on the professional civil service. With the revival of Schedule F, regulatory rollbacks, and the targeting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, the federal bureaucracy is being rigged to serve partisan ideology. Backing him is a GOP-led Congress, too cowardly—or too complicit—to assert its constitutional authority.

Keep ReadingShow less
One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

A roll of "voted" stickers.

Pexels, Element5 Digital

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

The analysis and parsing of learned lessons from the 2024 elections will continue for a long time. What did the campaigns do right and wrong? What policies will emerge from the new arrangements of power? What do the parties need to do for the future?

An equally important question is what lessons are there for our democratic structures and processes. One positive lesson is that voting itself was almost universally smooth and effective; we should applaud the election officials who made that happen. But, many elements of the 2024 elections are deeply challenging, from the increasingly outsized role of billionaires in the process to the onslaught of misinformation and disinformation.

Keep ReadingShow less