Campaign Finance Reform

Conservative view Limiting how much money a candidate may spend on his or her campaign violates the constitutional principle of Freedom of Speech. Liberal view Big money in political campaigns is destroying democracy. At its worse, it allows big money interests to buy the votes of our representatives who feel "beholden" to their big contributors; at the very least, it gives those interests unfair access to our representatives, since they are much more likely to make time to listen to the arguments and views of a big doner than those of ordinary people.

The Progressive Schoolhouse view I have no idea about the constitutional question! It may well be that any serious campaign finance reform is going to be unconstitutional. However, we need to remember that the Constitution was not handed down from Heaven carved on stone tablets. We can amend it, and have often done so in our history, when it was necessary. And real campaign finance reform is definitely necessary, partly for the reasons given in the Liberal view above, but even more for a reason that is seldom discussed. The real problem with all the big money we see in politics today is not that it can be used to buy votes or unfair access to our representatives (though I'm sure these things do happen). The real problem is that this money strongly influences who even appears on our ballots as a serious choice to vote for in the first place.