logo Standing Up To Powerful Interests
IssuesNewsReportsDonateHow You Can HelpResultsAbout Maryland PIRGMaryland PIRG Foundation JOBS

ISSUES

Campaign Finance Reform

 

Overview

Supreme Court Opinion Widens Corporate "Personhood" Rights

The Supreme Court decision in Citizen’s United vs. Federal Election Commission will significantly expand the role that the most powerful corporations play in election financing. (Click here to download a PDF of the decision.)

In a shocking burst of judicial activism, the Supreme Court decided that corporations should be treated in the same manner as ordinary citizens and be allowed to spend the massive amounts of money they accumulate on direct attack ads for or against members of Congress.

 “This egregious decision turns back the clock on over 60 years of precedent,” said Fielding Huseth for the Maryland Public Interest Research Group. 

“A corporation is not, nor has it ever been, a person with voting rights. Corporations are not the "We the People” our founding fathers were referring to," he added. “It is essential that we fix this misstep by the courts, before we see the landscape of elections financing washed away in a raging flash flood of corporate money.”

Lifting the ban on corporate money will further diminish the public voice in a system that already favors wealthy special interests and will certainly lessen the public trust in our officials.

Maryland PIRG advocates will continue working with a few state legislators in Annapolis in 2011 to limit corporate money in elections by:

-Strengthening disclosure laws by ensuring Marylanders can determine who is paying for campaign materials and campaign ads. 

-Establishing a public financing system which would encourage small campaign contributions from individuals as opposed to large, special interest donations.

-Closing the "LLC Loophole" that allows a company to set up multiple corporations for the purpose of making numerous campaign contributions above the intended legal limit.

And in Washington D.C., Lisa Gilbert, Democracy Advocate with U.S. PIRG, is working with leadership in Congress and the White House to pass legislation to blunt the worst impacts of the Citizens United v FEC decision. 





• For more than sixty years federal law has banned corporations from spending their treasury funds directly on elections. 

• With it's Jan. 21 decision, the Roberts Court turned back the clock.  Campaign reform advocates say this sets the stage for a deluge of corporate money in politics and threatens to upend the role of citizens as the central force in our democracy.

• Since the Tillman Act of 1907, Congress has banned direct corporate contributions to federal electoral campaigns. Corporations, unions, and other big money players have since looked for ways to evade the prohibitions by spending money on independent expenditures – ads, mostly, favoring or opposing candidates thinly veiled as issue advocacy. 

• In the 2008 election, a group called Citizens United used direct corporate contributions to produce “Hillary, The Movie.” It was a promotional piece intended to be distributed as a pay-per-view movie and advertised on cable, much like a campaign ad. 

• The Federal Election Commission took action against the producers for violating the "electioneering communications" provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA, a.k.a. McCain-Feingold.)

• The decision overrules not just 2003’s McConnell v. FEC and 1990’s Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, but also a unanimous 1982 decision upholding Congress’ right to regulate the political activity of corporations differently than that of individual citizens (FEC v. National Right to Work Committee).

News

Report

Poll: 80% of Americans Favor Giving Shareholders a Say in Corporate Political Spending in the Wake of Citizens United

Poll: Marylanders Support Clean Money Elections 09/09 



 
MARYLAND PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP
Maryland PIRG: 3121 St. Paul St., Suite 26, Baltimore, MD 21218