Activists plan to rally in Madison on Saturday for a constitutional amendment that would overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
The so-called “28th Amendment Roadshow” got its start on the west coast and is now branching out to other states. Among the speakers in Madison will be the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s Mike McCabe, who said that the amendment would undo what McCabe calls the judicial activism that gave corporations more power to influence elections.
“A constitutional amendment would say the court can’t do that, that the Constitution means what it says. The First Amendment means what it says,” he said. “These are rights reserved for ‘We the People,’ and that constitutional amendment would then say that money is not speech, and corporations are not people and elections are not auctions.”
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The rally comes just a couple days ahead of a largely symbolic vote scheduled in the U.S. Senate, in which Democrats are proposing their own amendment to undo the Citizens United decision. Most Republicans are expected to oppose the measure, arguing the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment in the Citizens United case was the right one.
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