Potential rule ideas to fix Citizens United

Sorry in advance this is an unedited blog post that I’m just writing in a hotel.

If you would like please reach out if you notice problems. Now back to the regularly scheduled program.

Probably a simple rule we could implement is only publicly traded companies are allowed to donate to SuperPacs. The lack of coordination between superpacs and politicians doesn’t seem smart as then the politicians have no control of who is donating as well as they don’t have any control over the ads that are being played. Both of these seem like problems. The fact that unlimited donations can happen tilts the scales towards large corporations anyways. Lastly I think we should work with our state system to see which state comes up with the best rules around it. It’s one of the stronger parts of our democracy allowing for states to make rules around how political campaigns are funded for their senators would be a start. The problem becomes the presidential campaigns which would probably be them following the rules in which they form their superpac. If we as citizens notice specific states specializing in these rules it could be something similar to Delaware focusing on corporate law. It’s really up to us when we start to look into this and figuring out how to fix some of these funding problems. I do think there are probably people who think Citizens United is working how it should but my argument would be that no coordination means the politicians are flying blind on who’s funding their campaigns which is both a positive and a negative. It's a positive because they can distance themselves from donors who expect a quid pro quo but also they could be pressured that they're going to lose their donations to another politician who will play ball. It’s one of those aspects that seems like a good idea until you realize that eventually the donors are going to find people who will play ball. In the end as we work across state governments to fix the rules we will begin to figure out what rules work and what rules don’t we are in uncharted with these SuperPac funding and I know Montana has started looking into it but hopefully we start to reach out to other states and representatives to fix some of the loopholes inside of the broad strokes that the Supreme Court laid out. They don’t want to set the rules they want to interrupt, so they would probably like some state legislators to step up and take a swing to help codify the rules around funding.