Alter: Fair Elections Amendment necessary to avoid ‘most corrupt’ campaign in U.S. history

Alter: Fair Elections Amendment necessary to avoid ‘most corrupt’ campaign in U.S. history

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Listen to Jonathan Alter on Afternoon Shift

Plenty of people have been troubled by the impact of the 2010 Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Perhaps the most entertaining reaction has been Stephen Colbert’s long-form performance art of creating his own Super PAC- a joke that has raised more than $1 million.

Jonathan Alter (AP/File)
Offering a more straightforward and actionable plan is Jonathan Alter, a longtime journalist and Obama biographer. In a Bloomberg column last week, Alter made a number of bold claims. He called Citizens United “as explosive as Plessy v. Ferguson or Roe v. Wade” and said the 2012 campaign “promises to be one of the most corrupt in U.S. history.”

His proposal is a Fair Elections Constitutional amendment, which he says would put electoral power back in the hands of the American people. Tuesday on Afternoon Shift, Steve Edwards plans to ask Alter to elaborate on whether money is speech and where we could be heading if it isn’t counteracted.