Supporters have billed the initiative as a way to strike a blow against the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.
With 87% of votes counted as of Wednesday morning, Montana Constitutional Initiative 194 has received support from more than 65% of voters, with just 35% registering opposition.
The initiative prohibits what it describes as “artificial persons” — which includes corporations, nonprofits, trusts, partnerships, and trade associations — from giving money to political campaigns.
Supporters of the initiative have billed it as a way to strike a blow against the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which opened the door to unlimited campaign spending in US politics.
One of the things driving me up the wall about campaign money over the last couple elections is that I’m being asked for money to fund the campaigns of people who I’m not even a constituent of.. Why am I being ssked for money to fund Talarico when I don’t even live in Texas?
Sometimes to better understand things you have to go back to the basics. The word “politics” consists of the Greek root “poli” meaning “many” and “tics” meaning “blood-sucking parasites”.
But more seriously it’s because your local senator was probably not up for reelection this year but flipping the senate was still to your advantage.
if you give any $ at all even once before at any level your going to be donor lists for everyone on your side, that’s just how this whole system works. only way to curb that would probably be properly publicly funded political campaigns (as various other countries have, canidates get x set amount of $/set % of airtime alotted to them etc.).
and well…in the US, due to the various levels of disenfranchisement, on average for most their national level politics is basically a non-choice. if you live in a state where practically nothing past the local/city level actually matters but you still want to support non-lizard canidates…best thing you can do is either donate $ or time, and $ is generally easier to come by
in a capitlistic hellhole like the US though…you can’t reach 8-900k (average rseat/pop ratio now iirc) without alot of $. was actually part of the reasoning for capping House seats, to curb a previous rise of populism that threatened US political establishment. make campaigning expensive and then you need approval of wider party/corporate (or lots and lots of volunteers, for upsets) interests to even have a shot.