Fighting big money in politics
Our democracy should give each of us a voice — and government should look out for all of us. But it doesn’t work that way. Instead, unlimited campaign spending allows corporations and the richest Americans to rig the system in their own favor and against the average voter.
Things are getting worse because the Supreme Court has decided, in a case called Citizens United, that corporations are people, and that they and the wealthy can spend as much as they want on elections. That’s just wrong. Corporations are not people, and they shouldn’t get to buy our democracy.
We're coming off the most expensive election in history.
As we saw in this last election, big corporations and wealthy interests flooded the airwaves with attack ads and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect candidates who will look out for their interests, not ours. They can spend unlimited amounts of money, like when Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, spent $52.2 million to support his chosen candidates including Mitt Romney.
We're working to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, and get big money out of politics. The only way to do that is to amend the constitution so that's is clear: Corporations are not people, and money is not speech.
It's up to us to restore our democracy's integrity.
Fair Share supports a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
Across the country we are working to give all Americans a voice in our democracy.
In the fall of 2012, Fair Share worked with CoPIRG to qualify and pass Amendment 65 in Colorado. Amendment 65 instructs Colorado’s congressional delegation to support a constitutional amendment that would end unlimited campaign contributions and declare that corporations are not people.
Fair Share organizers collected the lion’s share of the 182,000 signatures to qualify Amendment 65 for the ballot. Next we spoke to hundreds of thousands of Coloradans about the need to vote “Yes,” and distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets about Citizens United in Colorado and across the county. Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved Amendment 65 by a vote of 74 percent to 26 percent.
Colorado is the tenth state to pass a resolution demanding an end to unlimited corporate money in politics, along with hundreds of cities, towns and counties. But we're not stopping there.