The NY Times reports that the Supreme Court is going to review a Vermont law limiting campaign contributions in its new term. Historically politicians have been able to lay the smackdown on such laws because the court has found that contributions are the equivalent of constituionally-protected free speech. This always seemed utterly bogus to me. (Would bribery be a type of protected speech, too?) Apparently the court may revisit this notion in the next year.
It seems like the problem with contributions isn’t how much people give, but the appearance of quid pro quo — favors in exchange for contributions, which we all know takes place, but we usually simply can’t prove (even in obvious and egregious cases like the Abramoff scandal). So what if we made it so there wasn’t even a possibility to engage in quid pro quo? What if there were a law mandating that all campaign contributions must be made anonymously, through a neutral third party? In the absence of such a law, what if a candidate decided to accept contributions this way unilaterally?
Update: Maybe I spoke too soon; house majority leader Tom Delay was indicted today in the Abramoff scandal by a grand jury in connection with alleged violations of Texas state campaign finance laws. Very interesting that Delay’s defense is that this a "political vendetta" mounted by a Democratic district attorney. Um, Earth to Tom? DAs don’t bring grand jury indictments, grand juries do.
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