Letter: Santa Clara County backs amending US Constitution

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates for special interests.

Constitutional amendment
proposed on money, speech

Free speech is a fundamental freedom and an inalienable human right. As government becomes increasingly entangled with corporations influencing public discourse and elections, we must act to protect these rights that are essential to democracy.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling undermined our self-governance by opening the floodgates for special interests to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. For example, the resulting Super Political Action Committees raised $1.8 billion and spent $1.1 billion in the 2016 election cycle.

On Tuesday I called on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to consider adopting a resolution that supports an amendment to the Constitution establishing that money is not speech, campaign contributions and expenditures may be reasonably limited, and only natural persons have constitutional rights.

I want to thank my colleagues for their unanimous support, and more importantly – the advocates for their tireless work on behalf of democracy.

Dave Cortese
Santa Clara County Supervisor
San Jose

 

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