“In rendering its decision in our case, the Supreme Court equated money with speech because these days it takes the first to make yourself heard.”
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What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes.
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Once it becomes impossible for members of Congress to make a career of legislative service, the temptation to bend a vote for whatever reason may yield to the better angels of their nature.
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They may then be willing to cast principled votes based on an educated understanding of the public interest in the face of polls suggesting that the public itself may have quite a different understanding of where its interest lies.
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As a consequence, the Court ruled that the limits on campaign spending violated the First Amendment, but it accepted the $1,000 limit on individual contributions on the ground that the need to avoid the appearance of corruption justified this limited constraint on speech.
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