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Friday, June 27, 2008

The end of "campaign finance reform"?

The Supreme Court was busy yesterday, in its second major ruling, they struck down a portion of McCain Feingold campaign finance restrictions, ruling that the "millionaire exemption" is unconstitutional. The ruling does not overturn past cases, which said governments could restrict campaign finance "to eliminate corruption or the appearance of corruption", but said that limits to "level the playing field" are violations of the First Amendment. Essentially this ruling means "Congress is not allowed to tinker with people's speech rights because it thinks some people are speaking too much, or others not enough." In related news, Barack Obama's decision to opt out of the federal campaign financing may be the final blow for the system, John Samples believes:

Indeed, public financing of campaigns has always been more about partisan politics than the public interest. ... Taxpayers have spent over a billion dollars funding candidates since 1976, with little evidence that they're getting more or better choices than they had before.

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