It would be easy to say that the Brattleboro Selectboard was thwarting democracy when it decided not to vote on Kurt Daims' request to put a measure on this year's Town Meeting warrant calling for the town to support a Constitutional amendment to repeal the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Daims has come before the board before with other Town Meeting articles that some might argue go beyond the town's purview, such as arresting former President George W. Bush or former Vice President Dick Cheney for war crimes, or seizing the Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee power plant by eminent domain.
But the Selectboard got it right last week.
It's not that the board supports the Citizens United decision that gave corporations the same First Amendment rights as individuals to spend money and advocate political and policy positions during elections.
Rather, the board believes that it shouldn't be making decisions on what topics voters should consider.
Daims can still get an article on the warrant, as long as he can collect the required number of signatures from registered voters in town.
This method should be the preferred one. After the lawsuit that forced the Selectboard to schedule a referendum on the pay-as-you-throw policy in 2010, voters and town officials alike have recent and unambiguous legal guidance: the Selectboard must make decisions that are consistent with the town charter.
And this issue - the domination of the political process by monied interests - is something that Brattleboro voters should weigh in on.
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Two years ago this month, on Jan. 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down what was arguably one of the worst rulings in its history - worse than the Dred Scott case, worse than Plessy v. Ferguson, worse than Bush v. Gore.
In Citizens United, the conservative majority of the court struck down a major portion of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform law, saying that it violated the free-speech right of corporations to engage in the public debate of political issues.
As Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent, “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”
By upholding the false principle that money equals free speech and that putting limits on the financing of political campaigns is unconstitutional, Stevens called the majority opinion a dangerous rejection of common sense that “threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation.”
Corporations already dominate our political process through political action committees, fundraisers, high-paid lobbyists, and personal contributions by corporate insiders.
But thanks to the Citizen United decision, a corporation can also form a front group known as a “super PAC,” a form of political action committee where individuals and corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.
Under current federal election law, an individual can donate no more than $2,500 to a candidate for federal office per election. An individual can donate no more than $30,800 to a national party committee a year - “soft money” that is ostensibly used on issue and general party advertising and not to support the election of a specific candidate.
A person can also give no more than $5,000 to a PAC and no more than $70,800 to all PACs and parties in a year.
All of this data is tracked by the Federal Election Commission.
However, thanks to the Citizens United decision, super PACs face none of these restrictions.
While a super PAC is not allowed to advocate for a particular candidate, and it is not allowed to have contact with, or coordinate activity with, a particular candidate, it can say anything it wants to about a particular candidate's opponents. It also does not to have reveal its donor lists.
Just as everyone predicted, huge amounts of money - nearly all of it supporting conservative candidates and causes - began pouring into races all over the nation once the modest curbs on corporate campaign spending were lifted.
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We got our first look at this tsunami of cash in the 2010 midterm elections, but this year's elections will shatter every record for campaign spending, with as much as $7 billion spent on federal-level campaigns.
Nearly all of that money comes from the richest 1 percent of Americans. The people writing the checks to the super PACs are not spending their millions merely to encourage good government. They are spending to keep the government we have now, a government that caters almost exclusively to the needs of the wealthiest of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else and the collective good of our country.
That is why support is growing for a constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United and bring honesty and integrity to elections.
As Stevens wrote in his dissent of Citizens United, “Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.”
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., recently proposed what he calls the Saving American Democracy Amendment. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., has sponsored similar legislation in the House.
Both would make clear that for-profit entities such as corporations are not entitled to the same constitutional rights as people, and that corporations may be regulated by Congress and state legislatures.
Both bills also would reaffirm the right of Congress to enact campaign finance laws that limit the amount of money individuals can spend to influence elections. They would require political action committees to disclose their donations and operate with transparency.
It is appropriate that Brattleboro, and other Vermont towns, add their collective voices to the growing movement to get big money out of politics.
It is the first and most important step toward restoring our democracy.