In 2010, the Supreme Court decided in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as people, and that spending money is a form of speech that cannot be meaningfully restricted. The result has been the most dramatic transformation of American campaign finance in history — and not for the better.
In the 2024 election cycle, outside groups spent over $4 billion influencing federal races. Much of that money came from sources that are never disclosed, funneled through networks of nonprofits and shell organizations specifically designed to obscure the donor. We call it dark money. A better name is anonymous bribery.
The corruption is not just financial. It is structural. When a senator knows that a single donor can deploy $50 million against them in a primary, their independence is compromised before a single vote is cast. When a candidate for a state supreme court receives millions from interests that will appear before that court, justice itself is for sale. This is not hypothetical. It is the operating reality of American democracy in 2026.
The solutions are known. Public financing of elections — small-dollar matching, democracy vouchers, candidate spending limits — have been tested in cities and states and they work. Mandatory donor disclosure closes the dark money loophole. Overturning Citizens United through constitutional amendment restores the ability of Congress to regulate what it always regulated before five justices decided otherwise.
But the deeper question is whether we can imagine a system where the quality of your ideas — not the size of your donor network — determines whether you can run for office. What does that system look like? How does it get built? How does it hold?
What does a democracy you can’t buy look like? Submit your vision.