Reform #1. Overturn Citizens United

The 2010 Citizens United decision held that the First Amendment prevents the government from limiting independent political spending by corporations and unions. The fifteen years since have produced the consequences described in the section on equal political voice: the rise of super PACs, the eightfold growth in outside spending, the $291 million from a single donor in 2024, and the dominance of dark money in the primaries that decide who serves in Congress. The decision strains the principle that every citizen has an equal political voice, and as the Bowman and Good primaries showed, it strains the principle that voters choose their representatives as well.

Americans saw this coming. In the weeks after the decision was handed down, 80 percent of the country said they opposed it, including 85 percent of Democrats, 81 percent of independents, and 76 percent of Republicans.¹ The position was not a partisan reaction to a Court that had ruled in a particular direction. It was a near-consensus that the country had gotten something fundamentally wrong about how money should function in elections.

Fifteen years later, the position has held. In a 2018 University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation survey of nearly 2,500 registered voters, roughly three-quarters of the country supported a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision, with majorities across party lines.² More than four in five agreed that "the rich should not have more influence just because they have more money."³ At the state level, the demand has been organized and persistent: 22 states and more than 800 cities and towns have passed resolutions or ballot initiatives calling for an amendment.⁴

The amendment Americans are asking for has been written. The Democracy For All Amendment, first introduced by Senator Tom Udall in 2013 and reintroduced in every Congress since, would explicitly authorize Congress and the states to set limits on the raising and spending of money in elections, and would affirm that constitutional rights are the rights of individual human beings rather than corporations or other artificial entities.⁵

The path from introduction to ratification is a steep one. A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate, followed by ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures. Only 27 amendments have cleared this bar in the country's history, the most recent in 1992.⁶ The Democracy For All Amendment came closest to clearing the first hurdle in September 2014, when Udall's earlier version reached the Senate floor. The cloture vote was 54 to 42, with every yea vote cast by a Democrat and every Republican voting no.⁷ The amendment needed 60 votes to advance to a final vote, and 67 to pass. It got neither.

An amendment that three-quarters of the country supports has not, in fifteen years, been able to advance past cloture. That is the shape of the gap this paper is about, and it repeats across the six reforms that follow.

Footnotes

1. Dan Eggen, "Poll: Large majority opposes Supreme Court's decision on campaign financing," Washington Post, February 17, 2010. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021701151.html ↩

2. Program for Public Consultation, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Americans on Money in Politics, May 2018. Survey of 2,481 registered voters. https://publicconsultation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Money_in_Politics_Report.pdf ↩

3. Same source. The statement read to respondents was: "The rich should not have more influence just because they have more money." Eighty-eight percent agreed. ↩

4. Public Citizen, "Movement to Amend the Constitution to Overturn Citizens United," updated 2024. https://www.citizen.org/article/democracy-for-all-amendment-resolutions-map/ ↩

5. S.J. Res. 19 (113th Congress), "Democracy For All Amendment," introduced by Senator Tom Udall on June 18, 2013. https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/19 and https://freespeechforpeople.org/the-democracy-for-all-amendment/ ↩

6. U.S. Constitution, Article V. The 27th Amendment was ratified on May 5, 1992. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27 ↩

7. Roll Call Vote 113th Congress, 2nd Session, Vote No. 261, September 11, 2014. The cloture motion on S.J. Res. 19 failed 54 to 42. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=2&vote=00261 ↩