6 ms·
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been systematically attacking all attempts to limit private campaign finance, including public funding. In 2011, in Arizon
by BobaFloutist 2y ago
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been systematically attacking all attempts to limit private campaign finance, including public funding.
In 2011, in Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett, they ruled that a program that Arizona established which would give campaigns that opted out of private financing public financing matching their competitors financing infringed on the First Amendment speech rights of the privately financed campaign.
That's right, matching private campaign spending with public funding violates the free speech of the privately funded campaign, because it removes their advantage.
The solution to campaign finance needs to start and end with court reform, or it's DOA.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- samatman 2y agoThat was a good decision, because the rule creates a negative responsiveness paradox. Spending money to support your preferred candidate should not make opposing candidates stronger. That was the effect of Arizona's rule: money spent to promote a candidate was matched by free public money, which the opposing candidate did not have exert any effort to obtain. Good voting systems minimize this effect. The US first-past-the-post system is not a good voting system, but that's no excuse for making it worse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_responsiveness_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_responsiveness_parado...
- cbsks 2y agoWhy should money be involved in supporting a candidate? Doesn’t the democratic action of voting do that?
- pc86 2y agoYard signs, phone calls, websites, GOTV operations, consultants, debates, mailers, all of these things cost money. The current system requires you to appeal to donors with a winning message to get contributions to pay for these. Who decides which candidates get limited public funds? Are you just going to split it equally between whoever runs? Why should the public pay for fringe campaigns that won't get any votes?
- kelipso 2y agoUsually you do a poll and set a threshold for funding, like 5% or something, to avoid funding fringe candidates.
- pc86 2y agoSCOTUS doesn't "attack" anything. They issue a ruling based on law. It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism. The other reply already makes it pretty clear why this Arizona's law violated 1A. If you want to make a legal argument that donating money to a political campaign isn't political speech, go for it. But right now it's considered protected political speech so this ruling makes perfect sense. "Court reform" is a funny way of phrasing "ignoring the Constitution." This isn't even a partisan issue. Harris has been on the ballot 4 months and her campaign has raised approximately 3x the amount of money Trump's has. Moneyed interests are absolutely on the side of Harris this time around.
- jgalt212 2y agoTruth. The courts have become more / too important as Congress has become more ineffectual.
- potato3732842 2y agoCongress wouldn't matter as much if the feds hadn't spend 200yr usurping so much power from the states.
- dingnuts 2y agowell the states really kind of blew it when they chose slavery as the hill to literally die on, didn't they? it's not like this is all on Congress..
- giantg2 2y agoExactly what reforms do you want? If you want first amendment restrictions you can look into passing another amendment. That's really how that's supposed to work. The logic behind the ruling is fine if you actually dig into it - funding is speech, government funding of some candidates and not others dilutes the speech of some citizens and effectively compels speech from other citizens through the government. A better approach would be restricting all political advertising to some government provided platform. This would avoid the wasteful government matching.
- ETH_start 2y agoThe better solution is to continue respecting the First Amendment and not trying to restrict in any way, political speech, and instead reforming the electoral system so that the volume of speech one is able to output through the expenditure of financial resources does not have an impact on election outcomes.
- ETH_start 2y agoThe Supreme Court is defending the First Amendment, and "court reform" is a euphemism for eliminating the independence of the judiciary in order to dismantle those First Amendment protections.
- SauciestGNU 2y agoSupreme Court justices are taking bribes to deliver outcomes their cronies want, and "court reform" is a euphemism for holding justices selling our country accountable.
- ETH_start 2y agoThere is zero evidence of any bribery. This is just more salacious defamation by those who want to destroy the independence of the judiciary.
- defrost 2y agoSure. Harlan Crow just loves to sprinkle robust black men in gowns with money, six star vacations, and RV's as much as he loves painting by Adolf Hitler and Nazi memorabilia. We shouldn't kink shame or say that he expects any quo to his quids. > those who want to destroy the independence of the judiciary. Bit late to whine about that fait accompli. It'll take decades to wind back Mitch McConnell's two decade deep tainting of the US justice system with Federalist Society stooges.
- ETH_start 2y agoHe might love to shower his friends with gifts, and might find friendship with exactly the kind of minds that are bright enough to become Supreme Court justices. >It'll take decades to wind back Mitch McConnell's two decade deep tainting of the US justice system with Federalist Society stooges. Appointing justices when a space opens up is the standard way of doing it, and federalist judges adhere to the Constitution, so outside of a certain ideological camp, there is nothing wrong with appointing them. The lifetime tenure gives the Supreme Court justices a degree of independence that would vanish should every congress and president be able to totally capture the court in a single four year cycle by adding any arbitrary number of new justices to out vote the sitting justices.