Supporters have billed the initiative as a way to strike a blow against the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.
With 87% of votes counted as of Wednesday morning, Montana Constitutional Initiative 194 has received support from more than 65% of voters, with just 35% registering opposition.
The initiative prohibits what it describes as “artificial persons” — which includes corporations, nonprofits, trusts, partnerships, and trade associations — from giving money to political campaigns.
Supporters of the initiative have billed it as a way to strike a blow against the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which opened the door to unlimited campaign spending in US politics.
The initiative prohibits what it describes as “artificial persons” — which includes corporations, nonprofits, trusts, partnerships, and trade associations — from giving money to political campaigns.
I guess that’s fine. But it doesn’t do anything to prevent these organizations from advertising and voter mobilizing independently of a campaign.
SuperPACs are functionally unaffected
They use cash in Montana?
A giant wealth tax would have been better than a thin veneer of campaign finance reform.
Sure but how do you say that in meme? And also the veneer passed.
It’s a step, but trying to limit how money itself is spent will always create loopholes your opponent has better lawyers than you to exploit. Imho the better way to discipline billionaires would be to change tax code such that borrowing money against securities or anything like it (such as stock) is counted as realizing their value, which would trigger capital gains tax obligations.
It’d have somewhat similar effects to a wealth tax with way less administrative load for the state. The only exception I would grant is when you’re buying a single-person/single-family residential property you’re going to be living in yourself.
It’s not just aimed at artificial persons based in Montana either. It’s for any entity that operates or conducts business in Montana. I’m sure they’ll find a way to ruin it in the Supreme Court but it’s a win for now.
The way I see it this will need yo be a new amendment to the constitution because the judiciary is poisoned for a while.
Sounds great but I’ll believe it when a corporation tries to do it and suffers consequences more severe than a slap on the wrist.
What will happen is that the corporation will whine all the way to the Supreme Court about free speech. Awww, it thinks its people!
One of the things driving me up the wall about campaign money over the last couple elections is that I’m being asked for money to fund the campaigns of people who I’m not even a constituent of.. Why am I being ssked for money to fund Talarico when I don’t even live in Texas?
Sometimes to better understand things you have to go back to the basics. The word “politics” consists of the Greek root “poli” meaning “many” and “tics” meaning “blood-sucking parasites”.
But more seriously it’s because your local senator was probably not up for reelection this year but flipping the senate was still to your advantage.
if you give any $ at all even once before at any level your going to be donor lists for everyone on your side, that’s just how this whole system works. only way to curb that would probably be properly publicly funded political campaigns (as various other countries have, canidates get x set amount of $/set % of airtime alotted to them etc.).
and well…in the US, due to the various levels of disenfranchisement, on average for most their national level politics is basically a non-choice. if you live in a state where practically nothing past the local/city level actually matters but you still want to support non-lizard canidates…best thing you can do is either donate $ or time, and $ is generally easier to come by
in a capitlistic hellhole like the US though…you can’t reach 8-900k (average rseat/pop ratio now iirc) without alot of $. was actually part of the reasoning for capping House seats, to curb a previous rise of populism that threatened US political establishment. make campaigning expensive and then you need approval of wider party/corporate (or lots and lots of volunteers, for upsets) interests to even have a shot.
