Over 1000 activists demonstrated on Saturday that they understand the Constitution better than all five conservatives on the Supreme Court:

Photo by John Montgomery

The core holding of Citizens United was that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” More Americans believe in “spells or witchcraft” than believe allowing unlimited corporate money to influence elections will not lead to corruption.

The five Republican justices’ laissez faire attitude towards campaign finance is a huge boon to GOP candidates, and this is especially true for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. According to the Center for Public Integrity, nearly three-quarters of all outside spending on the presidential race has benefited Romney since Labor Day:

In the immediate wake of Citizens United, many conservatives defended the decision enabling corporations to spend unlimited money influencing elections because the same decision allowed unions to make similar expenditures. The Center for Public Integrity’s data also gives the lie to any claim that union spending can counterbalance money from the GOP’s well-moneyed backers. Of the $217.3 million in total outside group spending since Labor Day, only 1.3 million came from unions.

Both Romney and the Republican Party platform call for Citizens United to be made even worse — they want billionaires to be able to give millions of dollars directly to candidates, one of the few things still forbidden after Romney’s allies on the Supreme Court took the ax to campaign finance law. And a Republican Party lawsuit seeking to weaken campaign finance rules even further is currently on its way to the justices.

Billionaire Casino Mogul & GOP Donor Sheldon Adelson

To date, however, the courts have left federal limits on contributions directly to candidates or political parties largely unmolested. Under federal law, individual donations to candidates are limited to $2,500 per candidate, per election, and total contributions to candidates, political party committees and similar organizations are limited to $117,000 every two years. Thus, GOP billionaire Sheldon Adelson can currently give tens of millions of dollars to groups trying to elect Republicans that are separate from the Republican Party, but there remains a cap on how much he can give the GOP directly.

A lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee now wants to eliminate most of these modest restrictions on election buying, and eliminate the $117,000 cap on donations by people like Adelson. Moreover, because of a federal law that requires the Supreme Court to hear certain campaign finance cases, the Supreme Court is now almost certain to take the case — potentially handing the Republican Party their biggest Supreme Court victory since Citizens United.

As the lower court decision rejecting the GOP’s attempt to suspend the donation limits explains, the likely impact of a Republican victory would be enabling billionaires to launder as much money as they want through political party committees to the candidates of their choice:

Eliminating the aggregate limits means an individual might, for example, give half-a-million dollars in a single check to a joint fundraising committee comprising a party’s presidential candidate, the party’s national party committee, and most of the party’s state party committees. After the fundraiser, the committees are required to divvy the contributions to ensure that no committee receives more than its permitted share, but because party committees may transfer unlimited amounts of money to other party committees of the same party, the half-a-million-dollar contribution might nevertheless find its way to a single committee’s coffers. That committee, in turn, might use the money for coordinated expenditures, which have no “significant functional difference” from the party’s direct candidate contributions. The candidate who knows the coordinated expenditure funding derives from that single large check at the joint fundraising event will know precisely where to lay the wreath of gratitude.

Notably, this opinion was authored by Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who is arguably the most conservative judge in the country. Brown once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.” She authored an opinion earlier this year suggesting that any effort to regulate labor, business or Wall Street is constitutionally suspect. Yet even Brown acknowledges in her opinion the corrupting impact of unlimited money pouring directly to a political party.

Nevertheless, Judge Brown is obligated to follow previous Supreme Court precedents protecting campaign finance laws. The justices are not. Her opinion upholding the donation limits is now headed to the same five Republican justices who couldn’t figure out how corporations buying elections might lead to corruption when they decided Citizens United.

Despite significant right-wing hype, a new report by the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) on the potential for foreign nationals to illegally contribute to U.S. political campaigns does not actually find any evidence of foreign nationals successfully donating to the Obama campaign. Still, a wide array of conservative and mainstream publications have incorrectly reported that the report documents foreign donors giving to the President’s re-election.

The GAI (not to be confused with the Government Accountability Office) details in its report America the Vulnerable: Are Foreign and Fraudulent Online Campaign Contributions Influencing U.S. Elections? that because candidates now raise money on the Internet and the Internet allows foreigners to access U.S. websites, it is easier than ever for non-Americans in foreign countries to donate to political candidates. The Daily Beast published a shorter version of the report, titled “The Illegal-Donor Loophole“. The authors note that a wide variety of candidates — Democrats and Republicans — face this concern.

The report notes:

Using a collection of online research tools, the Government Accountability Institute analyzed a portion of the foreign links that lead to the Obama campaign website, my.barackobama.com. The Institute found a wide variety of instances in which apparent foreign nationals either received solicitation emails or posted links to my.barackobama.com.

GAI then notes nine examples of foreign bloggers and bloggers in foreign countries — who may or may not be U.S. citizens — who have posted email solicitations or links to a “donate to Obama” page on their blogs. Only one, a Norwegian blogger named Gaupefot, claims to have actually donated to Obama. The blogger’s unverified claim, written in Norwegian, also appears to claim that the CIA funds the Norwegian Labour Party.

The GAI also notes that people from other countries often visit campaign websites and that an array of cyber-squatters have purchased domains that sound like political websites and link them often to legitimate campaign websites. These are even more often visited by users outside of the United States. It also claims that because Obama’s campaign site — and 211 Members of Congress — use a verification system for credit card contributions that does not include asking for a three-digit security code (Card Verification Value), these sites are potentially at greater risk for fraud.
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Judge Charles C. Lovell

Typically, a judge who issues a ruling of this significance will accompany it with a detailed explanation of their reasoning. Judge Lovell went a different route:

Having reviewed and considered the entire record and the parties’ arguments and evidence, the Court concludes that Montana’s contribution limits in Montana Code Annotated § 13-37-216 are unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The contribution limits prevent candidates from “amassing the resources necessary for effective campaign advocacy.” The defendants are therefore permanently enjoined from enforcing these limits.

The Court will in due course issue complete and extensive findings of fact and conclusions of law that support this order. They will be filed separately, though, so that this order can be issued before voting begins in the upcoming election.

To be fair to the judge, his ruling is not entirely unreasonable given the Roberts Court’s hostility toward campaign finance regulation. Six years ago, in Randall v, Sorrell, the Court struck down a Vermont law that capped donations at $400 for statewide offices and as low as $200 for state representatives. The Montana law caps donations to gubernatorial candidates at $500 and limits on donations to other offices can be as low as $130, so there is a reasonable case to be made that Judge Sorrell’s hand was forced by the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, it is very unusual for a judge to issue such an decision without a meaningful explanation. Among other things, Judge Sorrell’s unwillingness to explain himself handicaps the state’s ability to challenge his decision on appeal, because they will not be able to levy attacks at weak points that may exist in Sorrell’s reasoning.

Indeed, as election law Professor Rick Hasen points out, there is a good chance that Sorrell’s failure to explain himself will lead to his order being at least temporarily suspended: “I expect Montana will go immediately to the Ninth Circuit for emergency relief, and judging from the last time a judge decided an important election question just before the election without giving any reasoning, there could well be an order staying this result, at least for this election.”

Credit: dbking

Thanks in part to the Citizens United Supreme Court case in 2010, any corporation, non-profit, super PAC, or individual can spend an unlimited amount of money to advocate directly for or against political candidates. Outside groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and American Action Network have sprung up in recent years, spending hundreds of millions to help candidates of their choice. In the presidential race, for instance, outside spending groups have spent more money on Mitt Romney’s behalf than Mitt Romney’s campaign has.

Under these campaign finance rules, ThinkProgress decided to investigate how expensive it would be to buy all available television ads for the month prior to the election, virtually guaranteeing victory for the favored Senate candidate. We looked at North Dakota, which is home to one of the most competitive Senate races this year between Rep. Rick Berg (R) and former Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp (D), to see what it would cost for an outside group to buy up every single ad slot for network TV in the month of October.

An analysis of ad rate cards for each of North Dakota’s 19 ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC affiliates showed that if every minute of ad time was available for the month of October — estimating about 15 minutes of advertising per hour — the total cost would be, at most, about $90,414,275. Of course, during prime time network programming, many of those ad slots are reserved for national advertisements, so the actual cost would likely be significantly lower than $90 million. But by buying every single 30-second slot for those thirty-one days, a group would not only be able to run tens of thousands of political messages — it would block the other side from being able to get its message out to viewers.

Federal law does offer some protection for a federal candidate in this situation. Those running for president and Congress are entitled to “reasonable access” to advertisements. Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Campaign Legal Center, told ThinkProgress that TV stations generally “keep some degree of ad inventory open for candidates,” but “as long as they come up with someone halfway decent and not ridiculous,” the Federal Communications Commission tends to leave it up to the stations how much access is “reasonable.” And because these protections do not apply to outside groups, a group could completely freeze out independent expenditures for the other side.

This possibility exposes yet another flaw in the Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United v. FEC. In Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the 1990 precedent that was overruled in Citizens United, the Court upheld a ban on political expenditures by corporate donors because “the unique state-conferred corporate structure that facilitates the amassing of large treasuries warrants the limit on independent expenditures.” These large treasuries enable many corporations to drown out all other voices — such as by buying up nearly every single ad slot in contested U.S. Senate race — while spending only a fraction of their vast sums of money. Yet Citizens United tossed out the longstanding rule preventing corporations from gaining “an unfair advantage in the political marketplace” via “resources amassed in the economic marketplace.”

The benefits of owning a senator are enormous. Beyond controlling one of the 100 most powerful legislators on Capitol Hill, arcane Senate rules, such as the filibuster and secret holds, give each individual senator an extraordinary level of influence. It’s not difficult for one obstructive senator to bring the entire American legislative process to a halt until he gets his way.

Could an outside group afford it? Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS reportedly have a combined budget of at least $300 million. The Koch Brothers, who made their vast fortune in the oil and consumer products industry, are each worth approximately $31 billion. It goes without saying that having a senator from an oil states who owes his seat to their backing would be a shrewd business decision for the Koch Brothers. A cheap Senate seat could also tempt a company like Exxon-Mobil, for whom $90 million would amount to just 0.22 percent of its $41 billion total profit in 2011.

Indeed, with control of the Senate potentially at stake, an array of outside groups are already pouring millions of dollars into ads trying to sway the election. It is impossible to know how effective a $90 million ad campaign would be, but it could certainly drown out virtually all other voices. And studies have shown that television ads are hugely influential in who wins elections — and the candidates who spend the most usually win.

Of course, because it’s already October, an array of groups and campaigns have already reserved ad slots in North Dakota for the month. But, because of our inept campaign finance rules, nothing would stop Rove, Koch, or anyone else from effectively purchasing a small-state Senate seat in this manner in 2014. Read more

Billionaire GOP Casino Mogul Sheldon Adelson

Due to a surviving remnant of campaign finance regulation, television stations are required to offer candidates advertising time at the “lowest unit rate.” They are not required to do the same for super-PACs or political parties. . . .

The Obama campaign (excluding super-Pacs and the party) entered September with about $88 million compared with about $50 million for the Romney campaign (ditto on the exclusions). So almost all of the pro-Obama money — $88 million of $101 million — is eligible for lowest unit rate while less than one third of the pro-Romney money — $50 million of $165 million — is. In recent months, television rates for super-PACs have cost several times — sometimes even five or six times — the rate paid by candidates. As the election nears, station inventory contracts and prices rise for candidates, that differential will shrink. But super-PACs will still probably pay double or more what candidates pay for advertising time.

So the good news for Obama is the dollar he raises from an auto worker in Detroit could be worth as much as five or six dollars from Romney billionaires like Sheldon Adelson or Charles and David Koch. The bad news for Obama is that Adelson is worth more than the gross domestic product of 23 nations put together. So Adelson can effortlessly toss off $10 million checks to support Mitt Romney, while Obama must endure the far more painstaking process of raising money from hundreds of Americans contributing far, far less.

At a forum on education policy on Tuesday morning, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched into an unexpected explanation of why big money should be kept out of our political system:

I just think that the most important aspect in being able to have a productive relationship between the teachers’ unions and the districts in the states that they are dealing with is that the person sitting across the table from them should not have received the largest campaign contributions from the teachers’ union itself. . . . The largest contributors to the Democratic Party are the teachers’ unions, the federal teachers unions, and so, if [the unions] can elect someone that person is supposed to be representing the public vis a vis the teachers’ union, but actually most of their money came from the teachers’ union. It’s an extraordinary conflict of interest. That’s something I think is a problem and should be addressed.

Watch it:

Romney is right! When a wealthy individual or organization that has a stake in public policy is able to spend their vast fortunes influencing elections, that inevitably leads to corruption. No one should have any illusions that politicians who enjoy massive support from teachers’ unions are any less corruptible than those who enjoy the support of Republican casino billionaires.

Yet this problem cannot “be addressed,” as Romney suggests, because the Supreme Court declared in Citizens United v. FEC that wealthy corporations and unions have a right to spend unlimited sums of money to buy and sell elections. The core holding of Citizens United was that massive outside spending seeking to change the result of an election “do[es] not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Apparently, even Mitt Romney understands that this holding makes no sense.

If Romney is worried about the impact union donations can have on lawmakers’ behavior, than he should be absolutely outraged by corporate, millionaire and billionaire donations. Federal law permits workers to opt-out of union dues spent to influence elections, which means that union election spending comes from pooling small contributions from workers who did not exercise this legal right. Corporations, by contrast, are under no obligation to seek approval from their investors or other stakeholders before trying to buy an election.

Likewise, the relatively small contributions from workers that participate in their union’s political effort add up to only a small fraction of what wealthy GOP benefactors are able to spend to change the results of elections. The AFL-CIO is the nation’s largest coalition of unions, for example, and its total assets at the end of 2008 were just over $91 million. GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, by contrast, is worth just under $25 billion. So if the AFL-CIO chose to sell its building, liquidate its assets and dump every single dollar into the 2012 elections, it could still only muster less than 0.004 percent of the money just one right-wing billionaire brings to the table.

But, of course, Romney has made it very clear that he is not concerned by the impact of corporate or wealthy individuals’ donations on politicians. Romney promised to appoint more justices in the mold of the four most conservative justices on the Supreme Court — all of whom were in the majority in Citizens United. Similarly, Romney endorsed eliminating all limits on campaign donations so that Wall Street billionaires can write million-dollar checks directly to his campaign and not just to super PACs and other outside groups.

Billionaire Casino Mogul Sheldon Adelson

As billionaires like Sheldon Adelson or Joe Ricketts write six, seven or even eight figure checks seeking to buy congressional elections and the White House, the overwhelming majority of the nation believe that such election buying needs to be reigned in. According to a recent poll by the Associated Press and the National Constitution Center, more than 8 in 10 Americans — 85% of Democrats, 81% of Republicans and 78% of independents — believe there should be limits on the amount wealthy individuals and corporations can contribute to groups seeking to buy elections.