In Robert Reich’s column, he shows us how we can eliminate Corporate Power & money in our Elections on the State level, without a Constitutional Amendment.
Most of us would like to overturn Citizens United and now we have a simple mechanism to use, a ballot initiative in 2026. Every state should have this initiative in place and eliminate corporate power and money in our Elections.
The Methodology:
States don’t have to grant corporations the power to spend in politics. In fact, they could decide not to give corporations that power.
This isn’t about corporate rights, as the Supreme Court determined in Citizens United. It’s about corporate powers.
When a state exercises its authority to define corporations as entities without the power to spend in politics, it will no longer be relevant whether corporations have a right to spend in politics — because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning.
Delaware’s corporation code already declines to grant private foundations the power to spend in elections.
Importantly, a state that no longer grants its corporations the power to spend in elections also denies that power to corporations chartered in the other 49 states, if they wish to do business in that state.
All a state would need to do is enact a law with a provision something like this:
“Every corporation operating under the laws of this state has all the corporate powers it held previously, except that nothing in this statute grants or recognizes any power to engage in election activity or ballot-issue activity.”
Sound farfetched? Not at all.
In Montana, local organizers have drafted and submitted a constitutional initiative for voters to consider in 2026 — the first step in a movement built to spread nationwide. It would decline to grant to all corporations the power to spend in elections.
Called the Transparent Election Initiative, it wouldn’t overturnCitizens United — it would negate the consequences of Citizens United. (Click on the link and you’ll get the details.)
The argument is laid out in a paperthat the Center for American Progress published several weeks ago. (Kudos to CAP and the paper’s author, Tom Moore, a senior fellow at CAP who previously served as counsel and chief of staff to a longtime member of the Federal Election Commission.)
Note to governors and state legislators: The Citizens Uniteddecision is enormously unpopular. Some 75 percent of Americans disapprove of it. But most of your governors and state legislators haven’t realized that you have the authority to make Citizens Unitedirrelevant. My recommendation to you: Use that authority to rid the nation of Citizens United.
Hopefully, Montanans will lead the way.