“Issue ads” are a way to evade disclosure requirements here. IIRC it’s something like a third party’s spending on a television ad saying “vote to re-elect Senator Smith in 2018” has to be disclosed no matter when the ad airs, but spending on an ad saying “call Senator Smith’s office and thank him for voting to lower your taxes” with soft-focus B-roll of the Senator looking kind and stately only has to be disclosed when the ad airs within a month or two of the election.
Suppose there were a law that Sundays were quiet time, no talking above a whisper on Sunday. Does that violate your free speech?
I mean, in the most trivial and literal sense, it clearly does. In fact, the only thing it does is prevent you from speaking freely.
That said, while it seems like a silly law, it’s not actually what most of us would categorize as a restriction on free speech, per se. It’s not stopping me from expressing my opinions. It’s not stopping me from tweaking the noses of the powerful, or expressing controversial opinions, or anything of that sort.
And to me, that’s what campaign spending laws feel like. I have a mental image of what it would be like to live in a country without free speech, probably from growing up back when the bogeyman was the Soviet Evil Empire… constantly glancing over my shoulder, wondering who I can trust, trying to remember what opinions are and are not acceptable. And that in no way matches up with a country that is just like the USA except with tighter restrictions on campaign spending. Heck, we lived in a country just like the USA except with tighter restrictions on campaign spending until quite recently, when Citizens United happened… and I don’t remember feeling like my free speech was impinged.
Sure, but there’s also a lot more, say, Christians than Jews. And yet every individual Christian’s electoral influence is precisely equal to every Jew’s electoral influence.
The same ought to be true of rich vs. poor.
Spain: officially bans them.
We’ve had people go to prison (or not, depending on how well connected they are) for stealing from the government they headed or for taking bribes not for personal use but for their parties. Well, for personal use too, but you weren’t asking about those…
In France :
-Individual donations to parties are limited to a quite low amount
-Expenses during political campaign are capped. A party or candidate isn’t allowed to spend more than a specific amount.
-Providing that the candidates gets a certain %age of the votes, a significant part of these expenses are reimbursed by the state.
-Political advertisement on radios and TV is forbidden.
-TV and radio stations (public or private) must give an equal coverage time to all candidates (news, shows, etc…)
-Candidates get an equal expression time on public TV and radio stations during the campaign, that they can use mostly however they want. That’s the closest we have to political advertisement (even though it’s typically rather the candidate explaining his views).
Basically, the general idea is that citizens can only make an informed choice if the candidates all have a rather equal ability to expose their views.
Norway doesn’t have limits on political donations apart from a ban on anonymous donations. The potential offender is the political party accepting the donation without being able to document the origin.
The problems of citizen united are avoided through:
A. A complete ban on political advertising on radio and TV.
B. A baseline different culture when it comes to political messaging, which is probably related to
C. A different political system with multiple parties, which makes it, at least to some degree, more important to inform people about the party’s platform, than to bash everyone else. (Sure, the largest parties do run with negative ads, but that has the risk of driving voters away from one opponent and to a different opponent.)
This, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter: that money, arguably, makes a rich person equal to (say) a million poor people in political influence.
This is of course assuming that those million poor people are perfectly coordinated and all of the same mind - which is a rather unlikely proposition.
True, a million people get a million votes. However, how they vote is going to be powerfully affected by what they read and see, which is why everyone spends so very much on campaigning. Through use of his money, Mr. Millionaire can reasonably hope to influence the voting of those million poor people, who are unlikely to gather together in an organized manner to oppose Mr. Millionaire.
It is notable that the same country that lacks campaign spending limits also lacks such usual and ordinary features of a Western democracy as a system of universal healthcare. Living in Canada, that omission is striking.
The poor have it bad because they are poor it is true.
However, the impact of that fact - what being poor means, the comparative extent of social welfare, the availability of social mobility (that is, the ability to reasonably be able to work oneself, of have one’s children work themselves, out of being poor) - all are affected by political power; and one aspect of that, even if not the most important is campaign spending limits.
It is notable for example that the US has one of the lowest levels of social mobility among industrialized nations (compare, for example, with Canada):
Assuming that one believes that social mobility is a good thing for society, of course - it is, after all, the stated “American Dream” that hard work will be rewarded with success, that anyone, if they are clever, hardworking and ambitious enough, can ‘make it’.
What an odd argument.
By that same token, would it be safe to assume that those places that have no limits (for example, the US) have already been “captured” by the wealthy? That the lack of limits “definitively proves” that there is a a severe problem?
Just how, in your opinion, does greater social equality ever happen? How did the franchise ever get extended (for example) from White, property-owning males to all males and eventually to all adults, male and female?
I submit that, besides the urge to concentrate all power in a few hands, there have always existed forces - sometimes among the rich and powerful themselves, more often through agitation from below - who sought to extend power more broadly. Such agitation ostensibly in the name of fairness, but more cogently in the name of stability and increase in overall social power (that is, societies in which all political and thus economic power are concentrated into the hands of a minority tend to be less stable and less powerful than those with broader equality - which is, at base, one of the reasons why Western Democracies have traditionally succeeded in relative competition).
Because this is why:
If I want to pay my own money to hire a plane to fly a banner saying “Vote for Senator McGovernorface” then I should be allowed. Not sure what is so complicated about that fact.
If “Citizens United” is a problem, it is one local to the US. In the UK we have limits on how much may be spent in the defined period of an election, both as concerns individual candidates, and central party organisations (there’s a case around at the moment around whether certain expenditures by a central party organisation ought to have been counted as supporting the campaigns of candidates in individual constituencies), likewise other organisations that may want to influence opinion at election time, not necessarily in favour of a particular party or candidate. Individuals who want to spend their own money promoting a particular candidate, and who do so without the imprimatur of the candidate and his/her election agent, are likely to be committing an offence if it’s any significant sum - and if they do with that imprimatur, it has to count against the expenditure limit. Of course there’s nothing to stop someone saying “I’m voting for X”, but that’s not quite the same thing.
Likewise, we don’t allow paid political advertising on radio and TV - there’s a set allocation of time for each party to fill with their own material,
We don’t see that as a limitation, or not a significant one, on freedom of speech, because it’s intended to level the playing field for everyone, and reduces the risk of parties and candidates trying to outshout each other into bankruptcy (not to mention drowning the poor bloody electorate in PR). “Equality of voice” counts for more than the freedom to try to shout down everyone else.
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/_media/guidance/party-campaigners/to-campaign-spend-rp.pdf
Yes, I understand that is what you believe. I can certainly see why you claim that that position falls under the overall banner of “free speech”. But (a) I think it’s at least worth discussing whether that state of affairs makes the USA better or worse, and (b) I think it’s a bit self-serving to just state as an obvious fact that unlimited political spending equates with free speech, because free speech is good, therefore obviously unlimited political spending is good
Unlimited political spending should or should not exist based on whether or not the country is a better place with it existing, unless you can make some REALLY compelling argument about not allowing unlimited political spending is a blow to the very free-speech principles that our national character is based on.
Wouldn’t that actually exacerbate the problem people are trying to solve?
Such a rule would mean that actual grassroots political organizations, the kinds that get $20 here and $100 there from people, could be regulated out of their activities, while individual rich people can do whatever they want!
If you own a television station, you don’t need to receive donations to broadcast your political opinions. You think the Koch brothers wouldn’t just buy up newspapers and television stations in such a world?
It seems to me that unlimited personal spending should be the default. And any hindrance of that should have a compelling argument.
The default, in my opinion, should be that Freedom of Speech would allow me to speak in any medium that I can afford and will let me, about any topic, at any time. I thought that was what free speech was?
Saying I can only spend a limited amount of my own money to proclaim my views seems wrong to me. I can’t see how anyone would think that was okay.
Yes, because the USA has freedom of Speech enshrined in the First Ad of the Constitution, which you Ukers have neither. 
Do you also think you should be allowed to shout “FIRE!” in a crowded theatre? If not, then you have a framework for understanding why other countries choose to place certain limitations on political speech. Having a broken political system may be more diffuse harm than a stampede in a crowd, but it is harm nonetheless.
I’m not saying it’s an inarguable correct line to draw, but very few people actually believe in “any topic, any time”, and the discussion on hand is quite different depending on whether one does or not.
I’m a bit unclear on whether you’re saying:
(a) Unlimited political donations do not harm the political process
or
(b) Unlimited political donations may or may not harm the political process, but that’s a price you’re willing to pay for free speech
Or something in between the two.
Really? You can’t even comprehend at all the position that the damage done to the political process by unlimited political donations is so sufficient to justify curtailing of spending? I mean, even if you disagree with that position, which of course you are free to do, it seems like a pretty straightforward and sensible one.
Yes, I think I should be allowed to shout “FIRE!” in a crowded theater. Especially if there is, you know, a fire in the theater.
Can you point out the law that forbids shouting the word “FIRE!” in a crowded theater?
I’m going to go with this one.
Who spent the most in the last Presidential election? Did that person win?
I don’t think the damage would be at all significant by allowing an individual to spend as much of his or her own personal money as they deem fit. If you want to limit the amount someone can contribute to a PAC, or a political party or whatever, then that’s fine with me. As long as I can take my own money and buy however many billboards, commercials, or signs that I want promoting any candidate or issue that I wish.
It’s a classic example when discussing free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater.
Yes, I know it is the classic example used. I feel that example sucks 
Because surprisingly, it is not against the law to shout “FIRE!” in a crowded theater.
Well, that gives us your opinion on the matter, but it doesn’t address the factual question that was asked. The question was what other countries were doing to avoid being in what is effectively a situation of unlimited spending by special interests and thus virtually unlimited control of the political system and public policy by special interests, and specifically the kind of unfettered spending that was endorsed by Citizens United. And a number of factual answers were given for various countries, because as it turns out, every advanced democracy in the world has some combination of contribution or spending limits and/or political systems with greater accountability or less vulnerability to being controlled by moneyed interests.
Quite a few people who actually study the matter would seem to disagree with you:
Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy.
That said, there are gray areas as to what constitutes electioneering vs. political spending vs. issue advocacy that provide room for debate. What is not debatable is that the US lags far behind other advanced democracies in virtually every area where special interests have a financial stake – matters like providing universal health care, policies to combat climate change, environmental regulation, medical and pharmaceutical cost control, income inequalities and progressive tax policy, and many many others. There’s a reason that the general public always ends up with the short end of the stick and ends up greatly distrusting their own governments. Ironically, distrust of governments that don’t seem to serve their interests is then used as a fear tactic against any regulation of political speech, a perennial, spiraling Catch-22.