Guest Opinion: Let’s Get Money Out of Politics

— from David Turnoy —

What is the one single obstacle that gets in the way of solving almost every problem that our government could solve? It is money in politics. Supreme Court decisions have equated money with speech, enabling those with more money to buy more political advertising and contribute vast amounts of money to candidates and initiative campaigns.

Because of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, court decisions have limited the ability of government to regulate political contributions. The court has also declared corporations to have the same rights as humans, enabling them to contribute huge sums of money as well. This has subverted our democratic system, enabling wealthy individuals and corporations to “purchase” candidates, governmental policy, and political outcomes. As a result, many representatives and senators represent their large donors’ interests, not the interests of their constituents, and the will of the people is not being carried out. Almost every problem we face today can be traced back to this fundamental unbalancing of our political process.

Because our Supreme Court, the executive branch, and Congress are representing their wealthy donors and not the people, the only way to undo this perverting of our system is with a constitutional amendment declaring that corporations do not have the rights of people and that money is not speech, which would allow legislative bodies to regulate political spending. If ¾ of the state legislatures (38 states) ratify such an amendment, it becomes law. Currently 16 states have approved such an amendment, and our effort aims to make Washington the 17th state. Our proposal is similar to those of the other 17 states, and WAmend is the Washington state offshoot of the national Move to Amend campaign.

You may remember that there was an attempt to get a similar measure on our ballot recently, but it was started too late and there wasn’t enough time to qualify for the ballot. This time we have all the way until the end of 2015 to collect 250,000 signatures to get our initiative on the state ballot for 2016. We are aiming for 330,000 signatures to make sure we have more than enough, and our goal is to have this done by Halloween. If we collect enough signatures, the initiative goes to the legislature, where they have 3 options: Pass it as is, change it before sending it to the voters, or sending it without changes to the voters. The last-mentioned is the usual route.

I am the coordinator of the campaign for San Juan County, and I am looking for folks who agree that money should not determine the decisions made by our government. If you agree, I would ask that you help by collecting signatures of voters; all you really have to do is ask your friends to sign one of our petitions. This is a nonpartisan issue; almost everyone agrees that money has no business in determining our politics.

If you would be willing to help by getting a petition and some information from me, please stop by my table at the Farmers Market anytime between 10:00 and 3:00 on Saturday, May 23. If you can’t make it then, please call me at 376-4165, or email at davidgeri@centurylink.net.

We know our system needs to change, and this is a chance for all of us to do something concrete to help create that change. Thank you.