Pros And Cons Of Citizens United V. FEC Concerning Campaign Finance

So what is the solution to solving the issues and dangers of the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC concerning campaign finance? It is clear that the best way to overcome the pitfalls of Citizens United is to create a new, stronger, and better developed piece of legislation to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision. The new legislation would need to highlight the strongest aspects of the BCRA as well as bring in new ideas to successfully limit campaign finance. To start, this new legislation should take aspects from the BCRA and strengthen those to avoid loopholes. The first aspect should be the ban on the solicitation and exchange of soft money by political parties. Without a contributor knowing, soft money exchanges lead to

This advanced legislation would be extremely beneficial because it highlights and strengthens the best aspects of the BCRA to avoid loopholes, all while adding the additional aspects of stricter disclosure laws and an egalitarian approach to increase citizen involvement in the legislative process, and more problems can arise without the legislation. First, without the ban on soft money exchanges, donations are essentially stolen and used for a purpose they were not meant for. Currently, it is common that when a contributor donates to a political party, they may not want their donation to go to an individual candidate, but most of the time, their donation makes its way to a political campaign. Second, without the new prohibition of electioneering communications ninety days before a general election and forty-five days before a primary, voters could be manipulated into changing their votes immediately before an election. Electioneering communications use propaganda to seriously denounce a candidate’s opponent, which can shift votes and suddenly turn the election away from voting because of a candidate’s goals and ideas and turn it into a vote manipulated by propaganda. One of the most important parts of this new legislation would be stricter disclosure laws. Without disclosure laws, dark money flows freely through the political system, and when dark money flows

As stated in Cole (2016), recent cases (those regarding gay marriage rights and the right for an individual to bear arms) have used small, incremental steps as a reversal strategy, and the people involved in those cases claim that this strategy is more effective than “dramatic measures” like proposals to pass an amendment. These cases involved the NRA and LGBTQ activist groups going to the “hinterlands,” state governments, and finding those most sympathetic to their cause and then they pressed for legislation. Those movements begun in states can “jump the track and influence federal constitutional law” (p. 13-14). The actions of the NRA and those LGBTQ activist groups can be classified as an act of lobbying. The NRA is one of the most powerful lobbying powers in the nation, so why should we follow in the footsteps of the greatest lobbying power when they pump money into our elections every single time? We shouldn’t. This tactic worked for them because their small, incremental steps included giving thousands of dollars to any legislator that would craft legislation to benefit the group. In order to overcome lobbying powers like the NRA and large corporations, incremental steps will not get us anywhere. This issue needs to be demolished by strong