In the News
Law 360: Calif Donor Disclosure Rule Unconstitutional, High Court Told
Caroline Simson
A slew of for-profit and nonprofit groups, think tanks, and three states have backed a bid for the U.S. Supreme Court to review a California regulation requiring nonprofits to disclose their major donors on a tax form, saying the regulation tramples on donors’ constitutional rights.
CCP
CCP v. Harris: Amici Curiae Brief of the States of Arizona, Michigan, and South Carolina in Support of CCP
As the chief law enforcement authorities of sovereign States, the Attorney Generals of Arizona, Michigan, and South Carolina prosecute various fraudulent acts committed by non-profits soliciting donations within their respective jurisdictions. Like the vast majority of states, amici States undertakes this responsibility without requiring non-profits to report annually the names of the significant donors as the Attorney General of California is requiring the Petitioner Center for Competitive Politics to do. The issues presented in the Petition merit this Court’s review. Although amici States retain a keen interest in deterring and prosecuting fraud, they support Petitioner’s arguments and oppose the positions taken by the Attorney General of California. Amici States take this position because they also have a vital interest in protecting their citizens’ First Amendment right of freedom of association against unconstitutional interference.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: Hillary Clinton’s pragmatic campaign-finance plan
Editorial Board
But Ms. Clinton also embraced a more positive and pragmatic approach. She would take the example of New York City, which matches small campaign donations with public money, thereby magnifying the voices of engaged citizens who can’t write big checks. For the first $175 of a donation to a participating candidate, the city matches every dollar with six additional dollars. Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) has proposed applying this sort of system to congressional elections, which Mr. Sarbanes estimates would cost about $500 million over 10 years.
New York Times: Hillary Clinton Announces Campaign Finance Overhaul Plan
Amy Chozick and Nicholas Confessore
Mrs. Clinton said she would support new disclosure legislation, seeking to unearth the hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign money that flows through business trade groups and nonprofits, neither of which must disclose donors. She also backs a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political activity.
She said she would also sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to fully disclose all political spending.
Los Angeles Times: Hillary Clinton’s secret weapon in campaign finance reform: Shame
Evan Halper
Hillary Rodham Clinton knows her plan to stop big businesses from secretly funneling tranches of cash into politics may not fly with the Supreme Court and Congress, so she has a backup plan: publicly shame the companies.
Clinton is embracing one of the few effective tactics for loosening the grip on big money in politics. The plan she announced Tuesday to force publicly traded companies to disclose all political giving comes as a growing chorus of academics and activists are finding new ways to expose companies that hide their political maneuvering.
Vox: Bernie Sanders is pushing Hillary Clinton to care about money in politics
Jonathan Allen
Like most campaign finance reform plans, this one is defined more by the difficulty in accomplishing its major goals than by the goals themselves. But it does show that Clinton is paying serious attention to Sanders, and that the issue has moved closer to the front burner for Democratic presidential candidates.
Associated Press: For Clinton, the Citizens United struggle is deeply personal
Julie Bykowicz
“I want to tell you, Citizens United was about me,” the Democratic presidential front-runner said last month in Iowa. “Think how that makes me feel. A lot of people don’t know that, but the backstory is eye-opening.”
After spending the first few months of her campaign bemoaning “secret, unaccountable money” in politics, Clinton is coming out Tuesday with proposals to roll back the effects of the court decision, a plan that includes pushing Congress to clamp down on secret donors whose money makes its way into elections. And new campaign video touches on the backstory, asserting she wants to overturn the Citizens United ruling because “she knows firsthand what it’s done to our democracy.”
Lawrence Lessig
Concord Monitor: Lessig to launch campaign for president at historic Claremont site
Nick Reid
Lessig said he was excited to see Clinton announce Tuesday a proposal to reform campaign finance, but he said he was neither persuaded that it would be a prominent enough issue in her administration nor that it could be successfully implemented.
“It doesn’t take a genius in political science to look at the Congress that sits in 2017 and realize this is not going to be a supermajority Democratic Congress. If you imagine that future where all we’ve done is replicate the partisan division that exists right now, then we have a future where we’re not going anywhere,” he said.
His unique referendum campaign, he said, is designed to rise above that.
Nonprofit Quarterly: Controversial Single-Issue Candidate Lawrence Lessig Responds to Critics
Rick Cohen
We would suggest that Lessig consider the importance of an issue that hasn’t been addressed in either of these responses to his critics: Without an infrastructure of community-based organizations that empower and give voice to regular people, that empower them to have significant input into and control over the problems they face in their communities, our nation will still have a significant democracy deficit. It isn’t a single-issue concern to suggest that it’s vital to build and strengthen the nation’s grassroots democratic infrastructure so that the concerns of regular people can be heard even if campaign finance reform removes a form of excessive control from 400 dominant political donors.
Independent Groups
NBC News: 30 Seconds to Know: What Is a Super PAC?
You may hear the term “super PAC” this campaign season. NBC’s Luke Russert explains what it is.
Privacy
The Atlantic: The Meanest Email You Ever Wrote, Searchable on the Internet
Bruce Schneier
Organizational doxing—stealing data from an organization’s network and indiscriminately dumping it all on the Internet—is an increasingly popular attack against organizations. Because our data is connected to the Internet, and stored in corporate networks, we are all in the potential blast-radius of these attacks. While the risk that any particular bit of data gets published is low, we have to start thinking about what could happen if a larger-scale breach affects us or the people we care about. It’s going to get a lot uglier before security improves.
The States
Huffington Post: Californians May Have a Chance to Vote Down Citizens United
Derek Cressman
One of the judges who ruled against Prop 49 has since retired and there are two new judges who have joined the bench. Nonetheless, for voters to have a chance to exercise the rights in the California Constitution, at least one of the judges who acted to temporarily remove Prop 49 would need to acknowledge that they were wrong in their initial conclusion that it was likely beyond the authority of the legislature to place Prop 49 on the ballot. It’s hard for any human to admit they were wrong, so this case will be a real test of judicial integrity.
Arizona Republic: Arizona utility regulators seek legal advice on dark money
Ryan Randazzo
Burns said he was interested in accessing information from APS about its participation in elections, and he and Bitter Smith requested the commission legal staff offer an opinion on whether the commission or any individual commissioner has that authority.
Little didn’t think the staff opinion mattered.
“I don’t think it addresses the larger issue,” he said.
“In my personal view, more political speech, whether it comes from corporations, unions, associations, self-appointed ‘watchdog’ groups or individuals is a good thing because the ability to engage in robust discussion about the qualifications of candidates in an election is a good thing,” Little said in a letter he read aloud during Tuesday’s meeting.
