Super PACs, access to government officials and donation caps emerged as critical points of discussion at a Janus Forum debate on campaign finance Wednesday evening.
The event featured Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Harvard, and Eugene Volokh, professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of the blog “The Volokh Conspiracy.”
Lessig opened the conversation by questioning “what corruption means in deciding the scope of campaign finance reform.” He differentiated between the type of corruption that misshapes the public’s view and the kind that “distorts the political process.”
“I think the Supreme Court was right in Citizens United v. (Federal Election Commission) to say it is not the concern of the government to worry about how someone’s speech affects the public. … Inequality or distortion of speech is not corruption,” Lessig said.
The problem, therefore, is the amount of time members of Congress and other elected officials spend — between 30 to 70 percent of their tenure — speaking to a small number of fundraisers and focusing on reelection rather than attending to day-to-day business, he said. Government officials’ dependency on relevant funders, who constitute only 0.05 percent of the U.S. population, is extremely problematic, he said.
As a solution, Lessig proposed implementing rules that do not stop individuals from exercising their rights to free speech by donating to political campaigns or influencing public opinion. He said he favors instituting a system in which government officials spend less time raising funds and draw from a wider range of Americans.
One model of implementing this type of arrangement is creating a voucher system in which all Americans mail a sum of money to the U.S. Treasury and then receive a voucher that they can give to any candidate, Lessig said. Under such a system, the candidate would promise to accept only vouchers and contributions under $100, so that each candidate would get a sufficient amount of money from a large number of Americans, he added.
Volokh, a consistent critic of campaign finance reform, argued in response that “restricting the spending of money on the exercise of a right is a burden on the exercise of the right.” He equated the access given to campaign fundraisers and contributors with that gained by celebrities, newspapers or interest groups. Though the danger of corruption due to certain proportions of access is pressing, it is not pressing enough to justify reducing people’s ability to speak, he added.
Volokh said he views campaign finance through the lens of the “free press” clause in the Bill of Rights, arguing that Americans and news outlets alike spend money all the time on spreading their ideas, slanting stories and editorializing. The same standard should be applied to campaign financers spending money to support a certain candidate and his or her ideology, he said.
The legitimacy of super PACs marked a topic of contention between the two speakers. Lessig argued that super PACs, which were not directly created by the Supreme Court, increase the system’s corruption because they have the ability to influence government officials, not just public opinion. “Congress can limit contributions to independent PACs, even if they cannot and should not limit expenditures of the PACs,” he said.
Conversely, Volokh argued that individuals can, and often must, pool money and resources in order to have a more effective voice — often in the form of a super PAC.
In the question-and-answer session that followed, undergraduates raised questions about the problems that arise when corporations or wealthy individuals are able to advance their interests to the public and squash weaker voices.
Lessig addressed this concern in his presentation, arguing, “I see it more like the freedom that the Nazis have to march in Skokie — we despise what they’re doing, but a robust system of free speech require that they are able to do it.”
Zach Ingber ’15, a Herald opinions columnist, said he was concerned that the “voucher system would put political power in the hands of people who don’t have an interest in politics.”
Lessig said in response that it would be necessary to monitor the voucher system to prevent a phenomenon of “voucher buying.”
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