**TLDR: **
How do other democracies deal with the problem of private-sector (non-political-party) contributions towards campaigns and candidates, direct or indirect?
Background:
The Citizens United case, at my understanding, allowed independent organizations to spend whatever they wanted to in support of political candidates (bypassing direct campaign contributions).
The argument for this case was that it is an unconstitutional restriction on political speech, limiting what private parties are able to “say” with their resources.
One common counter-argument I hear is that “money is not speech”, and a response to that has been “but if we overturn Citizens United and limit independent activities, it would affect not only mega-corporations and also non-profits”.
My understanding is that before Citizens United, ads explicitly supporting or attacking candidates must be paid for using limited, regulated, supposedly transparent contributions. After Citizens United, 501(c)4s can be used to basically launder money by anyone, in any amount, towards or against candidates.
So if I’m understanding this correctly, there are at least a few issues here:
The money vs speech thing: whether corporations and non-profits should be allowed to spend money to influence campaigns (and how you would regulate that)
Spending by corporations vs non-profits: does the law distinguish between campaign spending from a for-profit vs a non-profit, and does it matter what kind of non-profit (charitable c3s vs political advocacy c4s)
Direct contributions vs independent expenditures: donating money directly to a candidate’s campaign, vs using that money to independently put up signs, run ads, etc.
Campaign financing in general: whether there are other avenues (aside from contributions and independent expenditures) that allow a candidate to campaign and receive publicity
How do other countries deal with these issues? What is so unique about the American system that this is so deeply entrenched for us?
Canada certainly has mostly free speech. (You can be charged for hate speech, though), but they get around the problem by not defining political contributions as speech. And they simply put severe limits on how much anyone my contribute to a political party.
During the 1995 Quebec referendum on separation, each side was given a global spending limit. There was a big controversy because some people from out of the province rented some buses and came in to promote the “No” side and the “No” committee was accused of having exceeded the amount they were allowed to spend because of the costs of the bus rentals (and maybe the hotels). This did fizzle out, but illustrates how seriously the limits were taken.
I do not have the impression that money is a serious question here. And correspondingly, lobbying is much less effective.
Rights are seldom interpreted to be absolute. A lot of liberal democracies will admit some restrictions on rights depending on 1) the importance of the goal in service of which rights are restricted 2) the severity of the restrictions 3) how narrowly tailored the restrictions are to serving the goal.
The US supreme court is an outlier in terms of how little importance it attributes to the goal of limiting the influence of money on politics and how severe it considers those restrictions to be.
Can a private citizen spend his or her own money to purchase billboard advertising and such? Is there a limit on the amount a private citizen can spend of their own money?
The acid test is whether you can write a check to a politician and have him enact a law requiring public schools to remove all references of the Holocaust from textbooks.
The short answer is that it’s an interplay of some or all of multiple factors: limits on political contributions, limits on campaign spending by candidates and parties, and a whole range of sociopolitical factors that make large amounts of political donations and political spending unnecessary and/or relatively ineffectual. For example, public subsidies coupled with spending limits drastically undercuts the advantage enjoyed by a very wealthy or well-funded candidate. Additionally, the availability of free political airtime on otherwise commercial-free public broadcasting networks (in Canada, an example would be CBC Radio) helps to level the playing field and promote diversity of speech. Also very important is the fact that the parliamentary systems in many countries are structurally less amenable to “buying politicians” because of greater party cohesiveness. I think this is a good article about it, though it’s been a while since I read it.
So essentially the influence of money in politics is minimized through a synergy of all these factors operating together. Venturing somewhat into political territory and opinion here – but I think this is important – I would opine that the regulatory environment in most western democracies tends to be facilitated by a less absolutist view than in the US of what money should and should not be allowed to buy and a greater value placed on social solidarity and the public interest. The US appears to combine a tolerance for virtually unlimited political spending with an exceptionally fertile field for spending it to influence public policy.
Anyone can put up whatever they want on a billboard; however, political contributions and electoral advertising are regulated, including advertising by third parties if it’s deemed to be election advertising. [ETA: From the original context of the question, I assume you’re asking about Canada.]
So according to that, I can only spend $3,000 (give or take) to put signs on my yard to promote a candidate. After that, I can’t even buy a T-shirt with the candidates name on it. I’m glad we don’t have that system in the US.
I think you’re misunderstanding the scope, application, and purpose of political spending laws.
But if we’re discussing our relative degrees of happiness, personally I’m glad I live in a democracy and not a place where a couple of billionaire brothers all by themselves can direct $900 million of political spending to their own interests and contrary to the public interest. This is not about a T-shirt, it’s about money usurping the fundamental underpinnings of democracy. I’m glad I live in a country that has universal health care, like every industrialized democracy on earth, and not one where billionaires and insurance lobbyists will never let it happen.
How am I misunderstanding? It seems like there is a limit to what an individual can spend in Canada to promote a candidate for office. Is that not the case? Am I reading it wrong?
First of all, no one has ever been charged for wearing a T-shirt with an election message, so you’re trying to create an absurd-sounding situation that is just a non-existent straw man, as if there was some horrific limitations on “free speech”. No, election spending laws exist for a reason, that reason being to avoid the situation I described in #12.
Furthermore, a third party can actually spend as much as they like. I don’t know where you got that $3000 figure from. A third party has to register with Elections Canada if they spend more than $500 on election ads, and they have to submit an auditor’s report if they spend more than $5000. As I said back in #8, controlling the corrupting influence of money in politics does NOT consist solely in imposing monetary limitations, it consists of the synergistic effect of the many different factors that I mentioned, including regulation and oversight, and structural political and sociopolitical factors that minimize both the necessity and the impact of spending large amounts.
"Third parties are subject to election advertising expenses limits for general elections and by-elections.
The base limit for a general election with a 37-day election period is $150,000. Of that amount, no more than a base limit of $3,000 can be incurred to promote or oppose the election of one or more candidates in a particular electoral district. The $3,000 limit is also applicable to by-elections"
Perhaps you can explain what it means, since you think I have it wrong. And if it doesn’t mean that, then how can it stop a person in Canada from spending millions of their own money on elections?
Citizen’s United is a non-profit that made a film critical of Hillary Clinton during her campaign for President in 2008. Under the McCain-Feingold act, it was illegal to advertise Hillary: The Movie because it “mentioned a candidate within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary,” and the act “prohibited such expenditures by corporations and unions.”
Banning films for political reasons is completely against the spirit and letter of the First Amendment of the Constitution and a few hundred years of consistently-held American values. It’s not an edge case or some arcane technicality that only lawyers could understand. Preventing this sort of abuse is the very reason the amendment was passed in the first place, and why free speech is so sacrosanct in the US.
Yes, my mistake, there is in fact a regulated limit to third-party political spending, currently $211,200 in total and $4,224 in any one electoral district. This makes no difference to the rest of what I stated, or the ridiculousness of your T-shirt straw man. As I keep repeating, there are many different factors to keep the corrupting influence of money in politics at bay, and some of the structural ones are even more important than monetary restrictions. Even without those restrictions, a major factor that would prevent a person in Canada from spending millions to influence an election even if he could is that it wouldn’t do him much damn good anyway.
I like to think of myself as very very strongly pro-free-speech. But to me the question is always whether any restriction is based on CONTENT rather than on FORM.
That is, in any context in which I’m legally allowed to say “Trump is a shithead” I should be legally allowed to say “Hillary Clinton is a shithead” and vice versa. (It’s a bit more complicated than that, because I can see some reasonable distinctions between political speech and non-political speech, but all political speech should be treated equally, regardless of what positions or candidates I’m espousing.)
But there are plenty of totally reasonable restrictions on the form of speech I’m allowed to give, many of them overlapping with things such as vandalism, public nuisance, etc.
The constitution is not a perfect and unquestionable document. If a democracy is healthier and more vibrant if restrictions are placed around the form, but not the content, of political speech, then we should do that. That’s certainly not step one on the path to Big Brother.
A lot of very smart people wrote the constitution, but they were comically wrong about a lot of things, such as the inevitability of political parties.
Well thanks for that. I’m not sure what the hostility vibe is, I just wanted to know what it was in Canada that prevented or allowed an individual to spend their own money on an election. It looks like a max of $4,224 in any one electoral district. And despite your “straw man” accusation, I would think a person would be breaking the law if they spent $4,225 on signs for an election. Or T-shirts. Something I find horrible. YMMV.
I’m not sure that all the spending in US elections does anything either. How much did people spend to elect Clinton?
Fair enough. And if there were laws written that didn’t limit the amount an individual could spend of his or her money, while simultaneously limiting it for corporations or other organization, then I would be for that. But I’m not for any law that could limit individuals to a dollar amount they could spend of their own money to promote or denigrate a candidate, which is what Canada seems to have. Again, I am open to being told I am reading the Canadian rules wrong.
