Former US president Jimmy Carter has warned that US politics has been corrupted by billions of dollars of campaign financing following a supreme court ruling that he said legalised “bribery”.
He described the landmark 2010 Citizens United court decision, which equated campaign spending with free speech, as an “erroneous ruling”.
Speaking after the Iowa caucuses, in which Republican candidates spent $43m on TV advertising and Democratic candidates spent $16.8m, Carter said the domination of money in politics represented the biggest change since he was elected president in 1976.
In an interview for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “I didn’t have any money. Now there is a massive infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns for all the candidates. Some candidates like Trump can put in his own money but others have to be able to raise a $100m to $200m just to get the Republican or Democratic nomination. That’s the biggest change in America.”
Without mentioning it by name, he blamed the Citizens United ruling, which paved the way for Super Pac funding vehicles that many fear are being used by big business to buy political influence.
Carter said: “The erroneous ruling of the supreme court, where millionaires, billionaires, can put in unlimited amounts of money, give legal bribery the chance to prevail, because all the candidates, whether they are honest or not, or whether they are Democratic or Republican, depend on these massive infusions of money from very rich people in order to have money to campaign.”
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/03/carter-says-campaign-finance-2010-citizens-united-ruling-legalised-bribery
