A democracy is a government in the hands of men not corporations. In a 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. F.E.C permitted corporations and unions to make political expenditures from their treasuries directly and through other organizations, as long as the spending is done independently of any candidate. With this court ruling, big business and wealthy individuals have gained an unfair advantage over the political system by utilizing their vast income to influence elections, and other matters of the government. Therefore campaign finance should be reformed because the wealthy individuals and organizations have unlimited control over mainstream media, they are granted access to the government, and foreign countries can secretly influence our government in their favor. Campaign spending is out of control. This year alone PACs, controlled by companies, labor unions, and issue groups, had made a political expenditure of 1.7 billion dollars (OpenSecrets.org). Majority of the money was spent independently on political activities, such as advertising. For instance 54% of all money spent buy super Pac were on attack ads (Johnson, Dave) . Since these organization can spend unlimited amount of money on advertising they can control mainstream media and in turn can greatly influence the general public to vote for certain …show more content…
Corporation should have a first amendment right to spend as much money as they want to influence the outcome of an election. However when corporations, donate unlimited amount of money, it is to get something in return. Which leads to corruption because candidates are more likely to be drawn by the money and change their positions so that it aligns with the business, unions and only benefit the rich. That in itself goes against the first amendment because the average american can not have their free speech herd over the millions of dollars donated by