Democrat

The Citizens United ruling has opened Pandora’s ballot box. In the first election since the Citizens United ruling where the Supreme Court overturned law that regulated campaign finance, Super PACs have become a predominant factor in major elections.

n article in The Los Angeles Times reports, “Much of the focus on super PACs has been on their ability to raise unlimited sums from a cadre of super-rich donors. Less attention has been paid to how they use their money and the fact that they do not have to contend with the same kind of internal scrutiny as the candidates and political parties they support.”

The Citizens United ruling granted corporations some of the same rights as people when it comes to campaign contributions.

Utter chaos has ensued from this ruling, as one can observe in the latest Republican presidential race. The voice of the average voter is not being heard by most of the candidates. Citizens United has muted the voice of the average person.

Statistics taken from the Huffington Post show that “Super PACs, in existence for the first time in a presidential race thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision, are disproportionately funded by a handful of donors. USA Today analyzed super PAC donations since Jan. 1, 2011, and found that one out of every four dollars came from just five spectacularly wealthy donors.”

Allowing unlimited campaign contributions corrupts the government. If a certain lobby pays for a campaign, that candidate has to answer to them.

This has led to elected officials fighting for their lobby, and not focusing on governing their constituencies. Citizens United allows for corporations to run the United States if they choose, allowing the wealthiest entities to influence elections as they see fit.

I view the government as a system to maintain order and serve the best interest of the people. I am not a constitutional originalist.

I believe that the Supreme Court should reinterpret the constitution to best fit modern times while keeping the spirit and ideas of a democratic society in mind.

But I believe this case is one where you would want to stick with the framers intent. Instead of giving guidance to help our country, the Supreme Court has just created more problems.

Citizens United goes against the basic ideas that were intended to separate American democracy from an oligarchy.

The original idea was for the citizenry to have their voices heard through their representatives. This can be found in the Declaration of Independence “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Corporations are not governed like citizens, so therefore the government should not derive their power from them.

One reason for the gridlock that plagues our government is the influence of special interest groups. Citizens United helped entrench the power of special interest.

Reforming campaign finance and how officials are elected is the first step toward improving the bitter partisanship in our government.

The United States is dangerously close to becoming an oligarchy unless people vote intelligently in upcoming elections. Maybe once the influence of wealth is lessened, then government officials will make the compromises needed to run an effective government.

Michael is a freshman majoring in human rights and political science with minors in Arabic and religious studies.

Republican

On Jan. 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court made a 5-4 decision that the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Act) was unconstitutional. The McCain-Feingold Act restricted expenditures from corporations and unions. In effect, corporations and unions are now free to spend money freely through political action committees (PACs).

The decision was just because it rested on one of our democracy’s most central tenants: the First Amendment. The McCain-Feingold Act prevented organizations from speaking their minds in the political sphere.

Corporations were previously covered under the First Amendment, so this decision was only a continuation of the Supreme Court’s previous stances.

In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy called attention to the fact that Congress cannot “fine or jail citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

In effect, Justice Kennedy granted corporations the same right to speech to which people are entitled.

Furthermore, the McCain-Feingold Act allowed media corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to spread their opinions about candidates, while non-media businesses were restricted from spending more than a set amount of money to share their opinions on candidates.

As campaign finance attorney Cleta Mitchell pointed out, “The real victims of the corporate expenditure ban have been nonprofit advocacy organizations across the political spectrum.”

Why should media organizations be permitted to endorse candidates whenever it suits them when other corporations are subjected to restrictions on political speech within so many days of an election?

Before the Citizens United ruling, there was a dangerously blurred line between media corporations and other corporations that could potentially be used to suppress certain endorsements and criticisms, but not others.

Now corporations and unions are also able to broadcast their views freely, so the political playing field is now more equal.

Furthermore, campaign donations themselves are a form of free speech. By donating to a candidate or a PAC, one makes a political statement.

After the Citizens United ruling, corporations, unions and individual citizens could legally contribute unlimited amounts of money into one PAC.

These broadly funded PACs have been labeled as super PACs. To preserve campaign integrity, super PACs are still not allowed to communicate with a particular candidate.

As a result, a PAC can influence an election, but candidates still have individual limits to campaign contributions. This preserves the integrity of the electoral system, but allows citizens and companies to highlight issues and stances that are particularly important to them.

One of the most common challenges to the Citizens United ruling is the categorization of corporations as people.

But the Court did not rule that corporations get all of the rights that people get. The decision merely allowed corporations, which are composed of people, to present their political views.

We cannot allow our national fear of class division and symbols of wealth to cloud our understanding of the First Amendment. The Citizens United ruling merely upheld the vital role of free speech.

Our regular Republican contributor, Tucker Keene, was unavailable to write this week, so I will write the conservative side for this issue. I do not necessarily hold this opinion, but I will do my best to represent the general Republican view of the Citizen’s United decision.

Paul is the Opinion E
ditor. He is a sophomore majoring in voice performance.