Major Newspapers Attack Davis v FEC Opinion

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have now run editorials, attacking the U.S. Supreme Court decision Davis v Federal Election Commission. The Post editorial is here; the Times editorial is here. Neither editorial mentions that the U.S. promised to “provide the necessary legal guarantees to enable candidates to compete with each other on a basis of equal treatment before the law” when we signed the Copenhagen Meeting Document (part of the Helsinki Accords) in 1990. Nor does either editorial mention that, if the “Millionaire’s Amendment” had been made applicable to presidential candidates, individuals could only have contributed $2,300 to Hillary Clinton, whereas those same individuals would have been free to contribute $6,900 to Barack Obama. It happens that Congress didn’t make the “millionaire’s amendment” apply to presidential candidates, but it could have. Clinton spent more than $350,000 of her own money on her own campaign, whereas Obama did not. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s electionlawblog for the links.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.