Precedent actually started with Buckley v. Valeo when the Supreme Court found some aspects of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 unconstitutional, and ruled that we have a constitutional right to spend money in the political process because money equals speech (although here the court acknowledged that too much money could lead to corruption, so they upheld a limit on individual contributions to a candidate). The court also set the foundations for Citizens United by striking down limits on any interdependent entity to spend money to influence and election. As long as the efforts are not coordinated with a campaign, the speech is constitutionally protected as political and cannot be limited. Btw, Political speech here defined as speech that says "vote for," "dont vote for," "elect," "deny," any call to action. This is different from 'Issue Ads', or ads that say "Obama is a terrible person." I think this last bit is one of the more important issues since these ads are completely outside of the regulations that Citizens United was challenging.
I feel like SCOTUS has been upholding theory, without regard to practice. Spherical chickens in a vacuum. Money does equal speech. And in theory, Free Speech should be complete and universal. But in practice, speech = votes. This means the rich candidate has an advantage over the poor candidate. IMO that's logically absurd and morally decrepit. Again, the Theory of Free Speech is great. But at some point, the real-life practical implications take precedence over the grand theory.
I wonder if someone asked whether or not too much speech could lead to corruption. It's so strange to me that money could be equated with speech. Of course money can be used to promote a certain viewpoint, but money is not the viewpoint itself. Well, now it is. Still, not all speech is protected anyway. Even if money were speech, it doesn't follow that it should be protected speech.Precedent actually started with Buckley v. Valeo when the Supreme Court found some aspects of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 unconstitutional, and ruled that we have a constitutional right to spend money in the political process because money equals speech (although here the court acknowledged that too much money could lead to corruption, so they upheld a limit on individual contributions to a candidate).
This is where I get a little sketchy in my info, but I believe a lot of the reasoning for this money = speech stuff comes out of cases involving the NAACP and unions that we're fighting for the rights of the people they represented. These poor people didn't have a big say at the time and a lot of them didn't understand the political process, so most pooled their money together in order to promote a common interest. The first PACs were born, I believe, in order to help these poor workers. And money was seen as speech in order to help them achieve their goal. Obviously corporations and private interests have now taken advantage of this, but at least lawmakers intended to do good. And I mostly agree, money as speech just doesn't work. Actually, a intresting precedent that came out if Velao is that the court, in reasoning why they kept the limitations on personal contributions, said their is a desire to not only limit corruption, but the appearance of corruption even if it does not exist. So I would imagine that the court would scrutinize any campaign finance laws way more since there is this important interest, but it doesn't look like that is/will happen. And sorry if I messed up any of the spelling - I'm on my phone and can't type worth shit haha