The United States of America was founded on the principle that all men are created equal. In time, we have come to understand this to mean that all Americans have certain basic, unalienable rights, chief amongst them being the right to voice their opinions. In the past year, we have seen two very striking moves against that right.
In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which removed the necessity that certain states must obtain pre-clearance from the federal government before enacting laws regarding voting. In her dissent of that ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that “throwing out pre-clearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are getting wet.”
This ruling creates a situation where radical state legislatures can pass (and already have passed) discriminatory voting regulations intended solely to keep a specific group of people from voting. With this injustice already made into law, there is presently another matter at hand.
This week, the Supreme Court ruled in McCutcheon vs. Federal Elections Commission that the aggregate limit on the number of campaigns an individual may contribute to in a campaign season is struck down, meaning that individuals can now donate the maximum amount to as many campaigns as they want, so long as the donations themselves remain within existing caps. To make this simpler: before Wednesday, you could only donate a maximum of $123,200 to candidates and party committees. That limit is now completely gone. You can donate unlimited amounts, so long as each donation is within the limit per campaign.
This may seem like a very trivial issue, unlikely to affect any reader of this opinion, but this ruling has sweeping implications across the political system. This ruling undermines the very heart of the aforementioned right to free speech. When money is allowed to influence elections without restraint, wealth is confused with speech giving those with more money more influence in the political system. Corruption like this undervalues the entire meaning of the First Amendment. These two are not the same. Every American is endowed with the ability to make his or her opinions known, and all opinions of Americans are equally valid in the eyes of the law, a right codified in the First Amendment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his dissent of the McCutcheon case that: “The First Amendment advances not only the individual’s right to engage in political speech, but also the public’s interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech matters.”
From the beginning, we are afforded one vote, one equal part of the influence given in a particular election. When individuals are allowed to give unlimited amounts of money into the political system, they create undue influence on elections beyond that of others.
For reference, the opinion of a single Koch brother (who were among the largest donors in the 2012 election cycle) is currently worth $98 million, which they have each donated since the 2010 midterms. This is compared with the American income per capita of $28,051. To give that number scale, the average American would have to give every penny they earned for 3,494 years to equal what a single Koch brother has given in the past two election cycles. In another sense, the average American who contributes to a political campaign donates $945 per election cycle, roughly 103,703 times less than what a Koch brother contributes. Instead of the United States of America, we are inching our way toward becoming the Corrupted States of America.
This is how unfair elections are created. They rapidly become something other than fair measurements of the opinion of the populace when certain people are given more influence than others. We have reached a point in American democracy when money is influencing votes in ways never seen before. The Supreme Court, ruling in McCutcheon vs. Federal Elections Commission “understates the importance of protecting the political integrity of our governmental institutions,” according to Breyer’s dissent. This is perhaps the most important protection the Court can give to the American political process. We see actions like these across the globe — where a rich elite group pays to “rig” an election and place officials where they need them to gain even more power. As Americans, we condemn this as a terrible act against the human right to freedom of expression. However, when this kind of oppression and invalidation of democracy is brought to our shores, our political system accepts it with open arms.
We have reached a crucial point in our history. Will we be true to our founding values and promote equality under the law, or will we allow our government to be devalued and lose legitimacy? We must implore our designated representatives to protect the integrity of our government, beginning with protecting our elections from being overrun with corruption. We must protect the integrity and fairness our elections and that of our government, else we, as Americans, lose all hope in defending our way of life.