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March 29, 2022 - Epoch Times
15:52
28th Amendment to U.S. Constitution: Stops Big Money From Local Elections; 57% Ratified
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This is your Daily Facts Matter Update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
Now, given that we are only 225 days from the midterm elections, which, given the state of inflation as well as the ongoing war in Eastern Europe, which has the real potential to drag us all into some kind of a global conflict...
Well, maybe it's not hyperbole to say that this is one of the most consequential midterms in a very long while.
And so, along that line, I want to focus today's discussion on a very glaring election integrity problem right here in America, as well as a possible solution.
Now, the problem has to do with the fact that both wealthy American billionaires and even multimillionaires, as well as foreign entities, are able to shape our local elections by using large swaths of money.
And so, for instance, you might look at our political system and you might naturally assume that a senator from, let's say, Montana represents the people from Montana.
That would, of course, be a very natural assumption.
I mean a senator from Montana, is sitting in the federal congress representing the interest of their local constituency back home.
However, one of the money that was used to elect that particular senator came largely from outside of the state.
In that case, is it still accurate to say that they are a representative of the will of their local constituents?
Or is it more the case that their platform just happened to align with some wealthy individuals from other parts of the country that are willing to bankroll their campaign?
Now what I'm talking about is not theoretical.
Take a look at this data here from OpenSecrets.org.
It breaks down campaign contributions for members of Congress by whether that money came from in-state or from out-of-state.
And so when you're looking at incumbent House members, approximately 36 percent of their funding came from outside of the borders of their state.
However, this issue becomes even more pronounced when we look at incumbent senators who took in a median of 62 percent of their campaign finances from outside of the borders that they actually represent.
Think about that.
62 percent is well over half.
Half of their money came from outside of the state that they're actually elected to represent.
And as you can see, when you look at the names on that particular list, it's not a partisan issue.
There are both Democrats as well as Republicans receiving large sums of money from people other than those who are they who they are actually representing.
And also, just for your reference, that data only goes up until the year 2020.
And so we'll have to wait and see what these numbers are today.
But the trend definitely shows that over time, more and more campaign contributions for local races are coming from outside of the state.
Now, there are two trains of thought when looking at this particular issue.
The first perspective is that these campaign contributions hijack the will of the actual people.
Because let's say that you are a conservative candidate running in an office in an area that's slightly right of center politically.
And so perhaps, very technically, you would be the best representative for the will of the people in that particular area.
However, your opponent in the race, well, they began to receive major campaign contributions from various organizations that are funded by people like Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, as well as Mark Zuckerberg.
And then suddenly, your opponent is able to outspend you on advertising by a factor of 10 to 1.
Meaning that within your locality, their name recognition goes through the roof, voters feel more familiar with them, and then they ultimately win the vote.
And of course, this scenario can happen both in a general election, but also in a primary election.
Meaning that these big money donors, they can control not only who gets on the ballot, but also, potentially, who wins the ballot.
And so, in that scenario, the scenario that I just laid out, does the elected official represent the true will of the people?
Does he or she represent the actual constituents that they were elected by?
Well, at the very least, there's an argument to be made that they don't.
However, this issue is even further confounded by a second point, which is that in some races, these donors are not only out of state, they're actually out of the country.
Meaning that the donors are not even Americans, rather they are foreign nationals from outside of the U.S. border.
Now, you might be asking yourself, how could that even happen?
And the answer is, unfortunately, quite simple.
As we've already discussed on a previous episode, late last year, meaning late 2021, the Federal Elections Commission had a vote which very, very few media reported on, even though it was, in fact, extremely consequential.
Specifically, the Federal Elections Commission decided that ballot initiatives do not count as quote-unquote elections as defined by the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, meaning that in the eyes of the federal government, a ballot initiative is, at least technically, And the reason that this is so important is because it opens the door for foreign nationals to fund ballot initiatives, they can fund referendums, they can fund recalls, and they can even fund congressional redistricting.
Meaning that quite literally, a wealthy foreigner in another country can influence how an American state's congressional map is drawn up.
Because again, these things are now, at least technically, not regarded by the federal government as quote-unquote elections.
And so what this actually means in practice is that foreign nationals, meaning citizens as well as organizations of countries like China, Iran, Spain, Canada, and so on, they can go ahead and now fund signature collecting drives.
They can fund recall petitions.
They can fund referendum campaigns.
And they can financially support the different campaigns that aim to either change the existing laws or to introduce new laws.
And in some states, these ballot initiatives can even amend the state constitution.
And so with this new rule now firmly in place, it means that not only Mark Zuckerberg can fund all these different initiatives, but citizens of other countries can get in on the action as well.
And in fact, they already have.
For instance, over in the state of Maine, there was a Canadian power company which spent about $10 million to finance the opposition to a ballot referendum.
That particular referendum was trying to close down a power plant project, but this Canadian company, which is based in Canada, but which of course has financial incentives to keep that project running, it spent millions of dollars to convince the American citizens within the state of Maine to vote against it.
And this is where things got very, very interesting.
Because the Maine legislature, which is actually controlled by Democrats, they were not happy about that.
They were not thrilled with having a Canadian company, a foreign company, pouring millions of dollars into their local referendum election.
And so, they voted, and they passed a bipartisan bill to ban foreign funding in their local elections.
However, when that piece of legislation finally reached the desk of Ms.
Janet Mills, who is the governor of Maine, she's also a Democrat, well, she vetoed it.
She killed the bill.
And this was her reasoning.
Quote...
Entities with direct foreign investment employ thousands of Mainers.
Legislation that could bar these entities from any form of participation in a referendum is offensive to the democratic process, which depends on a free and unfettered exchange of ideas, information, and opinion.
And so, it's amidst this backdrop of out-of-state as well as foreign funding of America's elections that a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution is currently roaring across the country, and it has now been endorsed by 22 out of the necessary 38 states.
This amendment, once passed, it would officially become the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and it would officially ban the use of both foreign as well as out-of-state funding in local races.
But what's even more...
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And now, Roman in the studio, back to you.
Now, about two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mr.
Jim Rubens, who's a board member of the American Promise Organization, and we discussed his work in keeping big money out of local elections by getting the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified by enough states to make it the law of the land.
Take a listen.
So we at American Promise are seeking the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, restoring power to Congress and to the states to set reasonable limits on out-of-state campaign money, dark money, super PAC money.
Here's the problem.
You've got people like Mike Bloomberg, Soros, Zuckerberg.
They're billionaires.
They've amassed hundreds of millions of dollars, and they're targeting with data science and big money every swing election now.
For Congress, certainly, party control of state legislatures, and it's getting down to school board level now.
And they're supplanting the preferences, the policy preferences, the candidate preferences, election outcomes in states all over the country, and it's damaging, destroying federalism.
This is important.
The framers of our Constitution were most fearful, most concerned about concentration of power.
They divided power.
We added the Tenth Amendment subsequent to the ratification to install federalism in our Constitution.
This system was not foreseen by the founders and the framers, where powerful entities could concentrate power to this extent.
So this amendment corrects that problem and restores federalism, restores local control, local preferences over election outcomes.
One example we gave prior to the interview that you mentioned was in your race for Senate, right, in New Hampshire.
Can you give us the breakdown of the financials for that?
2016 U.S. Senate, $132 million went into that race, 95% out of state.
Now, the problem is this money from out of state, super PAC, dark money, control of it is highly concentrated in the hands of the majority leaders of both bodies of Congress and billionaires.
And again, it's replacing the preferences, policy preferences, candidate preferences of local New Hampshire voters.
And it's critical to defend federalism that people in New York, this money is primarily controlled in New York, D.C., and California, critical under federalism.
That we can live together as a nation, that New Hampshire can be different than California.
We all don't want to be New York City.
The reason I wanted you to mention that example is because it really, I think, elucidates the problem, which is that you think of a senator in New Hampshire as being a representative of those people.
95% of the money actually came from out of state.
Yes.
The question becomes, is that really a representative of that state?
Now, the argument I imagine for it would be that, yes, you still have the voters in New Hampshire.
Only the voters in New Hampshire are voting for that representative.
But since so much money is coming from outside of the state, maybe people don't know as much about the other guy, right?
Exactly.
The money, it does not determine with certainty election outcomes.
We all know this, but it influences.
It has a significant impact on the election outcome.
So the candidate, first of all, becomes...
Allied with, subservient to, responsive to the source of this super PAC money, even though it's supposed to not.
And so the candidate is representing the billionaire, the super PAC. In some cases, dark money money is coming from China and Russia.
And the candidate is becoming responsive to the needs of that entity, as opposed to the voters in the particular state.
It's a subversion of the notion of voter control over election outcomes.
Do you think that the reason such a measure wasn't originally put into the Constitution was that this problem was just not foreseen?
Exactly.
This problem was not foreseen.
This cropped up really as a result of a wave of judicial activism beginning in the early 80s by the Supreme Court where they struck down laws, state laws that controlled this problem.
Let me give you an example.
In Montana, the legislature was run by Anaconda Copper Company in Montana in the 1880s.
So the legislature in Montana says we're going to ban corporate money in Montana elections.
That's what they wanted in Montana.
The Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court, struck down that Montana law.
And I think Montana would want that back again.
Our amendment, the 28th Amendment, would restore power to the Montana legislature to effectuate that.
Another example, Alaska had a donor-voter law so that if you're a candidate in Alaska...
People who live in Alaska can vote for you, can donate to you, but people in California cannot donate to the Alaska candidate.
The Supreme Court struck it down.
We want to have this amendment to restore power to the people of Alaska to have a donor-voter law that they want.
How many states have so far signed on board?
Twenty-two states have endorsed, mostly through legislatures, some through ballot initiatives.
Twenty-two states have endorsed and asked Congress to give this proposed amendment back to the states for potential ratification.
We need to get to 38 to ratify.
American Promise has been in existence five years to get to these 22 states.
We're going to get here within two to four years.
Now, if you'd like to learn more about the American promise, as well as the 28th Amendment that they're looking to ratify, I'll throw a link into the description box below this video of an article that goes into much greater depth.
And also, I'd love to know your thoughts about this issue.
Do you support this amendment?
Do you think it's a good idea?
Or do you believe that in the context of elections, giving people money is a form of free speech and should not be curtailed regardless of how local a race happens to be?
I'd love to know your thoughts.
Please leave them in the comments section below, and I will read them later.
And lastly, since you've completed this episode of Facts Matter, I would highly recommend that you go on over to Epic TV and check out a phenomenal episode of American Thought Leaders where Jan sat down with Victor David Hansen and they discussed how to make sense of what's really going on in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Here's a trailer.
He can't win according to his original initiative, but he can win according to his fallback position the way he did in Syria and Grozny.
That was the idea, we're going to destroy the country.
Today I sit down with commentator, classicist, and military historian Victor Davis Hanson.
He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of the book The Dying Citizen.
Amidst our current information war, Victor cuts through misinformation and propaganda and breaks down what he sees as happening in the Russia-Ukraine war.
I think all of our listeners are so confused.
So we're sanctioning Russia, but we're asking the Russians to negotiate the Iran deal.
Okay, but we're not letting the North Dakotans or the Texans pump another two or three million barrels, but we're going to beg the Saudis, we're going to beg the Iranians, we're going to beg the Venezuela to pump more.
It's insane.
If you want to check out that full episode, as well as all the other phenomenal content over on Epic TV, I'll throw a link to it.
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And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times.
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