Amendment 3 Deep Dive
Amendment 3 focuses on controlling money in politics. Congress has made some relatively good rules for keeping money in politics transparent and under control. Rules have changed throughout time, and enforcement and effectiveness have been mixed. However overall, attempts have been made to keep this under control.
The Supreme Court got involved in 2010, and ruled that congress lacks the authority to control money in politics in all the ways they thought necessary. This has led to more money being pumped into our political process without the ability for us to know who or what entity contributed the money.
When ratified this amendment will give Congress the authority to regulate money in politics, and set up some basic rules for them to follow when doing so. We'll look at the individual sections.
Section 1
Section 1 broadly limits who can spend money to "influence elections". Only political parties, individual voters, and a candidate's campaign organization can spend to influence elections. This precludes corporations, non-profits, governments, and other organizations we haven't thought of yet from influencing elections.
Section 2
While Section 1 is very broad and aims to control "influencing elections", Section 2 only focuses on a candidate's campaign organization. It specifies that only voters who are constituents that would be voting for the candidate, or a political party can contribute to a campaign. This stops outside money from flowing into a state to influence that state's election of senators directly. Money from outside the state could still find its way into senatorial elections by way of political parties. Funneling the money through a political party may not seem much different, but one of our objectives is to strengthen the parties, and this works in that direction. Practically it is different than having a host of big money donors directly courting and donating to the candidates. Also, Congress having the ability to regulate contribution amounts makes this less of a problem.
Section 3
Section 3 explicitly states that Congress has the responsibility to limit the amounts that can be spent on influencing elections by individuals, political parties, and campaigns. There are no explicit instructions on how congress does this, so the political process will have to work if they are failing at their jobs. Leaving this undefined allows for flexibility in responding to new creative ways people find to influence our elections.
Section 4
Section 4 focuses only on how political parties get funded. There is only one way. Through contributions by individual voters. Amounts are controlled by congress through Section 3. As parties become more trusted and accountable it will be politically viable to have larger contribution limits for the parties than those of individual candidates. This will have to be worked out by Congress as we see how quickly reforms impact the political climate.
Section 5
Section 5 requires disclosure of who is contributing to campaigns and parties.
Section 6
Section 6 seeks to protect the press from being stifled because they "influence the outcome of elections".