To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
Finance Campaign Constitutional Amendment
We, the undersigned, do hereby demand that our duly elected US Senators and Representatives submit and pass the following Constitutional Amendment:
Section 1. All elections for President and members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate shall be publicly financed. No political contributions shall be permitted to any federal candidate, from any other source, including the candidate. No political expenditures shall be permitted in support of any federal candidate, or in opposition to any federal candidate, from any other source, including the candidate. Nothing in this Section shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
Section 2. The Congress shall, by statute, provide limitations on the amounts and timing of the expenditures of such public funds and provide criminal penalties for any violation of this section.
Section 3. All issue advocacy groups shall be required to publicly list all donors and such listing shall be freely available publicly either via the internet or in printed form no more than 30 days after such contribution has been made.
The continued legitimate existance of our democracy rerquires that steps be taken to limit the influence of money within our political system and the reaffirmation of the one person-one vote basis of our political systems. The corrupting and undue influence of corporate and group financing of our elected officials must end.
Why is this important?
The destruction of our democracy can only be stopped if the majority of us make it clear that we demand a constitutional amendment prohibiting any person or entity from donating ANY money to a candidate's campaign (and that includes a millionaire candidate buying his own election). The recent Supreme Court decision (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) has now made corporations “persons” entitled to use their vast amounts of money to influence legislation that serves their needs and not necessarily those of the public. The 99% need to have a greater voice in what our elected officials are legislating and not the 1% who hold the majority of the wealth in this country. Simply passing a law, i.e. the McCain–Feingold Act, has shown that this is clearly not enough when the main provisions of the law can be eviscerated by a Court ruling. We must demand a Constitutional Amendment.