Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Arizona's Matching Campaign Funds

Today the Supreme Court agreed to hear a First Amendment challenge to Arizona's "clean elections" system, which gives matching funds to participating candidates so they can keep up with spending favoring their opponents. Since the Court blocked those subsidies during this year's elections (by reinstating a lower court's injunction), the decision to hear the case is not surprising. It suggests that one widely discussed response to freer speech for unions and corporations—taxpayer-funded subsidies aimed at "leveling the playing field" by counteracting the impact of independent spending—may be just as constitutionally vulnerable as the restrictions the Court overturned in Citizens United.

As this Institute for Justice video concisely explains, Arizona's campaign financing system aims to make sure that no candidate enjoys an "unfair" advantage by attracting more contributions or independent support than his opponent. Hence a publicly funded candidate gets more money from the government not only when his opponent raises more but also when outside groups spend money in support of his opponent. The issue for the Court is whether such matching funds are constitutionally tantamount to the direct limits on spending it has long said violate the First Amendment.

I discussed the case in a column last June. I.J. has background here.

Comments

[prolefeed]

Using tax dollars coerced from you to finance political speech you find repugnant ... if that doesn't violate the First Amendment, what does?

[Robert]

Explain how funding even more speech infringes your own freedom of speech.

[NAL]

So, candidate A can't raise money because he favors killing puppies and kittens for sport, but his opponent, candidate B raised $2M by promoting a national puppy and kitten appreciation month ("squeak toys as far as the eye can see" is his campaign motto).

The people "speak" by giving money to B, but the gov't's going to "speak" back against the people by giving money to A. If "clean elections" isn't blocked and laughed out of court, then we truly have lost the nation.

[Max]

Or, just maybe we need to level the playing field against the corporate money to ensure fair elections, fucknozzle.

[Cytotoxic]

We could level the playing field by ensuring everyone's election platform is the same. Would that make you happy?

[NAL]

Oooooh. Max called me a bad word.

maybe we need to level the playing field against the corporate money to ensure fair elections

Fair according to whom?!

[oncogenesis]

The word "fair" means something different to progressives than it does to normal people. See "Harrison Bergeron".

[Jason]

Or, just maybe we need to level the playing field against uppity challengers to ensure incumbent reelection, fucknozzle.. and incumbent shill.

[Robert]

Well now wait a minute -- if you were tasked to come up with a way to solve issues of public policy, wouldn't you want to hear from both sides of every question equally? Isn't that how a tribunal is supposed to operate?

[fresno dan]

You know whats unfair??? All those candidates who get more votes.

All this jerryrigging things to get each candidate the same amout of money is inefficient - Just give every candidate the same number of votes, and we can either have a coin toss, or we can have both of them serve.

I mean even if you gave both candidates the same amount of advertizing, it would still be unfair cause some of the candidates are soooo ugly, or stupid, or ugly and stupid. Than you would need the great scale of Hammurabi to figure out how much advertizing candidate X's uglyness needs to offset against candidate Y's idiocy. It apples and oranges, or stupid and ugly or some such...

[creech]

What strings are attached? Would a badly flawed candidate like the democrat dude for senate in SC or the
witch in Delaware get funding equal to their opponents? Can one hire spouse and relatives to run the campaign office, blow money on limos and private jets, etc.? Are Greens and Libertarians allowed at the trough or just the approved candidates?

[cynical]

"Are Greens and Libertarians allowed at the trough or just the approved candidates?"

That you had to ask is hilarious.

[Colonel_Angus]

Using taxpayer money to subsidize speech is, in effect, limiting the speech of individual taxpayers. That fact applies to things like NEA and NPR, too.

[Robert]

"Taxpayer money" is just one big pot. Subsidizing speech is no more limiting the speech of individual taxpayers than is subsidizing anything other than speech. The money and speech issues are 2 separate things.

Now, if you want to say that it's wrong to extort money from people, I'd agree, and it shouldn't matter what use the money is put to in saying that. But taking people's money limits their speech no more than it limits their medical care, their housing, or anything else they could spend their money on.