I don’t exactly love the focus that campaign spending gets as an issue. Although it seems “common sense” enough, you would think if it were as winning an issue as it seems, then literally every major party would be falling over itself to .

However, the amendment submitted for endorsement does at least thread the needle somewhat, especially as it explicitly notes the interest in freedom of speech, which is what campaign spending limits actually CURTAIL. Lest we forget, publishing and advertising and running campaigns costs money; hitting a political in their pocketbook is as much a strategy that can be used to abuse our 1st Amendment rights as flooding the election with money-bought resources.

Also, we have actually seen in the past cycle examples of how money ultimately CAN’T buy elections—the poor performance of billionaire-backed candidates (namely, Elon Musk) in Wisconsin, where the man practically outright stated he was trying to buy the elections, shows that you really do reach a limit in how much you can influence an electorate that patently doesn’t like you. VOTES still wins elections. Money doesn’t vote. And after a certain threshold, money can’t even influence votes, or it influences votes the opposite way, as voters become sick of the endless political ads.

It is not the worst amendment proposal ever, and not the worst version of this kind of amendment, to be sure… but I am deeply skeptical over whether this sort of thing can “fix” our democracy. At least, not more efficaciously than, say, better voting methods or sortition or increasing the size of the USA/CA legislature can.