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Anthony Sanders

Money gets to play bigger role in campaigns

Romney campaigns in Florida
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigned in Florida in 2012.
Gerardo Mora/Getty Images

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Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the limits on overall campaign contributions that individuals can make during a campaign season. Although the court left intact the limit on how much can be given to any one candidate or party organization, it allowed such donations to flow to unlimited numbers of candidates and organizations.

The decision, McCutcheon v. FEC, joins the Citizens United case in fundamentally changing the landscape of campaign funding in the United States.

Observed the Washington Post:

In its decision, the court compared the overall contribution limits to restricting the number of candidates a newspaper can endorse.

"Contributing money to a candidate is an exercise of an individual's right to participate in the electoral process through both political expression and political association," the justices wrote. "A restriction on how many candidates and committees an individual may support is hardly a 'modest Restraint' on those rights. The Government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse."

We take a look at the decision and the role of money as speech in political campaigns.