Campaign Finance

The problem

Over five decades, the Supreme Court has removed, piece by piece, the power to limit money in federal elections. Buckley v. Valeo (1976) struck down all limits on campaign spending.¹ Citizens United (2010) extended unlimited spending to corporate treasuries,² and SpeechNow (2010) created the super PAC.³ McCutcheon (2014) struck aggregate contribution limits and narrowed “corruption” to outright vote-buying — influence, access, and gratitude no longer count.⁴ In June 2026, NRSC v. FEC struck the limits on coordinated party spending as well, and said again that preventing outright bribery is the only interest the Court will recognize.⁵ When Montana defended its ban on corporate political spending, enacted by voters in 1912 after mining magnates bought the state legislature and upheld for ninety-eight years, the Court reversed in 2012 without hearing argument.⁶

On this question the United States is a genuine outlier. Canada’s Supreme Court upheld spending limits as essential to a “level playing field.”⁷ The United Kingdom caps party and outside spending by statute.⁸ Germany writes party-finance transparency into its constitution;⁹ France bans corporate donations outright.¹⁰ Roughly 46% of the world’s countries cap candidate spending.¹¹ American doctrine alone holds that electoral fairness is a constitutionally forbidden reason to limit campaign money — in Buckley’s words, “wholly foreign to the First Amendment.”¹ That closes every other path. States cannot experiment: Montana tried, and was summarily reversed.⁶ Congress cannot legislate around a constitutional holding. Only an amendment reaches it.

The principle

Six sections that restore authority and name a purpose — without prescribing any campaign finance system. The first three are the For Our Freedom Amendment, American Promise’s text, adopted word for word save one added sentence;¹² the last three are this project’s additions:

Power to set reasonable limits. Congress and the states may set reasonable, viewpoint-neutral limits on the raising and spending of money in elections — contributions and expenditures both, which is what closes the super-PAC channel. The words “reasonable” and “viewpoint-neutral” are in the text, not left to doctrine, and courts keep the power of review. Abroad, they use it: a British £5 spending cap¹³ and an Ontario year-long restriction¹⁴ were both struck down by courts that otherwise accept limits. Limits written by incumbents to entrench incumbents have not survived review elsewhere, and would face the same review here.

A named purpose. Political equality and the independence of government from concentrated wealth are declared legitimate constitutional ends — the answer to Buckley’s rationale, not just its result. This is the ground every peer democracy already occupies. The clause operates only through the limits in Section 2; it is not a freestanding power over speech.

The right to know. The Court has upheld disclosure 8–1,² yet the major disclosure bill has passed the House and died by Senate filibuster three times.¹⁵ Framing disclosure as a right of the people makes sunlight the default rather than a regulatory option. “Substantial” keeps the amendment aimed at big money — thresholds and protections for small donors and threatened groups stay in statute.

Artificial entities, in election spending only. Legislatures may treat corporate and human election money differently — the choice Montana’s voters made in 1912¹⁶ — without deciding anything about corporate rights generally.

Power to keep foreign money out. Congress and the states may bar foreign governments, foreign nationals, and entities they own or control from contributing or spending to influence American elections. Federal law already bans foreign nationals from candidate elections, but the Supreme Court has expressly left open whether that reaches foreign-controlled domestic companies, and the states act under a patchwork of statutes. The text names the class and grants the power; the definitions of ownership and control — the machinery a court struck down in Maine’s 2023 law — stay in statute where they can be tuned. This is the one part of the category that moves through Congress on a voice vote.

A press shield. The amendment protects press activity — news reporting, commentary, editorial content — regardless of how the speaker is organized. Paid advertising is regulable spending; journalism is not. That is the line every peer democracy draws.

The draft text

Sections 1–3 are the For Our Freedom Amendment as published by American Promise, adopted word for word, with one sentence added at the end of Section 2.¹² Sections 4–6 — disclosure, foreign money, and the press-and-speech savings clause — are this project’s additions.

Why it can pass

The public has never split on this the way the parties have. Limits and disclosure poll as full-spectrum consensus, with single-digit partisan gaps:¹⁷¹⁸

Keeping foreign money out is the broadest consensus of all. Maine voters barred foreign-government election spending 86–14 in 2023; a bill extending the federal foreign-national ban to ballot measures passed the House by unanimous voice vote in July 2026; and asked directly, Americans favor a ban by nearly identical margins in both parties:

The amendment itself polls at 71% (72% of Republicans, 76% of Democrats, 74% of independents — Ipsos for American Promise, 2025).¹⁹ That survey was commissioned by the amendment’s chief advocacy group; advocacy-commissioned polls on this issue run several points above independent ones, and both find supermajorities.

The record among officeholders is harder, and we state it plainly. The only Senate floor vote ever held on such an amendment failed in 2014, 54–42, with every Democrat voting yes and every Republican voting no.²⁰ But the votes taken closest to the voters point the other way:

• Twenty-five state legislatures have formally called on Congress to propose a money-in-politics amendment — including Oklahoma and Idaho, which passed their resolutions with near-unanimous support in 2026, and Missouri’s House, which passed unanimously.²¹ Thirteen more states would be needed to ratify.
• Montana and Colorado put the question on the ballot in 2012: Montana’s I-166 passed with 75% and Colorado’s Amendment 65 with 74% — one state voting Republican for president by double digits that year, the other Democratic — both instructing their delegations to pursue this amendment.²²
• In 2026 a Republican member introduced an aligned amendment resolution in the House for the first time — early evidence that the party line in Congress is beginning to follow the electorate.²³

If it passes: the law today and the day after

This amendment grants powers and names purposes; it repeals no statute of its own force. (How ratified amendments interact with existing law in general is covered in After ratification.)

Federal law today

The Federal Election Campaign Act still sets base contribution limits, requires committees to report contributors above $200, bans direct corporate and union contributions, and bars foreign nationals from federal, state, and local elections.^24252627 Other provisions remain printed in the Code but have been held unconstitutional: the corporate expenditure ban after Citizens United, aggregate limits after McCutcheon, and coordinated party limits after NRSC; the FEC withdrew the first two sets of regulations in 2014.²⁴⁵²⁸ After Buckley, Congress rewrote the statute to the new doctrine in 1976.²⁹ Federal law preempts state law for federal elections.³⁰

State law today

Twelve states set no limit on individual contributions to state candidates; twenty-three prohibit corporate contributions.³¹ Thirty states bar foreign contributions in candidate elections and twenty-five in ballot-measure campaigns.³² Colorado’s constitution still forbids corporate spending that expressly advocates for or against a candidate, but a state statute now provides that, notwithstanding that clause, corporations may make independent expenditures; Missouri’s constitution caps contributions and bars corporate giving; Montana narrowed its 1912 ban to direct contributions in 2015.³³³⁴³⁵ No state law conflicts with the draft, because every operative section grants power rather than imposing a rule.

The day after

Nothing on the books becomes unenforceable. What ends is the constitutional force of Buckley’s expenditure rule, of Citizens United as a barrier to legislation, and of the rule that preventing quid pro quo corruption or its appearance is the only interest a legislature may pursue.¹²⁵ Section 1 works from ratification: courts must treat the interests it names — the freedom of speech, representative self-government, federalism, electoral integrity, and the political equality of natural persons — as compelling. Sections 2, 3, and 5 grant powers; nothing changes until Congress or a state legislates. Section 4’s right to know exists “as provided by law,” so existing disclosure statutes are the law on day one, and any expansion must be enacted. Section 3 gives Congress and the states the power to implement and enforce the article. Provisions struck under superseded doctrine remain in the Code, and Section 6 says the article does not revive them — they return only if re-enacted. The courts are left the meaning of “reasonably,” whether Section 4’s right to know reaches ballot-measure campaigns (Sections 2, 3, and 5 name ballot measures expressly), and how far a state may reach into federal races.³⁶³⁰ A 2026 Virginia bill shows the trigger form: limits effective only on the Attorney General’s certification that a Supreme Court opinion or a constitutional amendment made them likely to be upheld.³⁷

What we left out

What we considered and set aside, and why:

• “Corporations are not people” and “money is not speech.” The other major drafting approach would strip constitutional rights from all artificial entities and direct courts never to treat election spending as speech.³⁸ The slogan polls well — it is why Montana’s I-166 reached 75%²² — but the text reaches every incorporated body: nonprofits, churches, unions, and newspapers, and removes due-process protection from businesses generally. It converts a consensus issue into a fight over corporate legal status. The narrow entity clause in Section 3 does the election-money work without the spillover.
• Public financing of campaigns. The weakest remedy in the polling — about 50% support (Gallup, 2013)³⁹ — and machinery rather than principle: the countries that use it revise the design constantly.⁹ The amendment permits it and does not prescribe it.
• Dollar figures in constitutional text. Spending limits are written by incumbents, and low limits favor incumbents — challengers must buy the name recognition officeholders get free. Frozen constitutional numbers would turn a clause meant to protect elections into one that protects incumbents. “Reasonable” plus judicial review is the field-tested mitigation.¹³¹⁴
• Detailed disclosure rules. Compelled disclosure has its own constitutional counter-tradition — the Court has protected membership lists and donor lists from blanket exposure,⁴⁰ and small donors to controversial causes face real harassment risk. The amendment guarantees sunlight on substantial money; thresholds, timing, and exemptions for threatened groups belong in statute.
• Details that belong in statute: regulated-period lengths, coordination and independence definitions, foreign-money enforcement, and the enforcement agency’s design. Peer democracies show independent enforcement matters more than rule stringency — and none of them specifies the agency in constitutional text.

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