By Tyler Lamb
Editor
In the post Citizens United era, one of colossal campaign finance, it seems like mission impossible to remove big money from politics, let alone get Congress to begin a process to amend the Constitution.
Nevertheless, activists in Elkhorn, Delavan and Lake Geneva will be going door-to-door in the coming months to gather signatures on petitions to force local advisory referendums. The effort began in earnest last week with the end of the Walworth County Fair, according to Lisa Subeck, executive director of United Wisconsin, one of two groups backing the effort in Walworth County. The second group is Kenosha Area Progressives.
According to Subeck, the vast majority of people knocking on doors will be local activists attempting to create a dialog with their neighbors.
Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission is a U.S. constitutional law case, in which the Supreme Court held the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting political independent expenditures by corporations, association or labor unions.
According to Subeck, the national strategy is to show Congress a broad-based support in order to begin the process to amend the Constitution.
“The end goal is a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United,” Subeck said. “The movement came to Elkhorn, Delavan and Lake Geneva because there are local people interested in working on the issue.”
“They saw some of the other cities and towns across the state starting to put referendums on the ballot at election time asking the people what they think of the issue and decided they wanted to do it too,” she continued.
To place a referendum on a ballot, state law dictates petitions must carry with signatures equaling 15 percent of the vote in the mist recent gubernatorial election. That would require 459 signatures in Elkhorn and Lake Geneva and 339 in Delavan, according to election records.
To date the effort has been successful in other local cities, including Whitewater and Fort Atkinson, which passed the referendum this past April.
Whitewater’s vote was 909 to 177, a margin of 83 percent in favor, according to records.
According to Subeck, wherever the petition has been on the ballot in Wisconsin, it has passed by at least 70 percent.
Subeck also noted those margins of victory are not solely due to liberals or Democrats.
“Seventy to 80 percent of voters at the ballot box approve of the referendum,” Subeck said. “We don’t have a whole lot of districts around the state that are 70 to 80 percent liberal, Democratic or progressive.”
In early August, both the Kenosha Common Council and the Kenosha County Board passed resolutions calling on Wisconsin’s congressional representatives to take the steps necessary to enact a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics.
To date, 18 Wisconsin municipalities have called for the reversing of Citizens United.
Two local members of Congress have widely varying views on the topic.
Previously Rep. Paul Ryan (R-District 1), one of the top money-raisers in Congress, said he has not decided where he stands on the issue.
Ryan’s office did not respond to a request by Southern Lakes Newspapers for a statement on the matter by press time.
Neighboring Rep. Mark Pocan (D-District 2) sponsored move-to-amend legislation when he was a Wisconsin assemblyman. In addition, Pocan reaffirmed his support in February, shortly after he became a member of the House of Representatives.
Advocates allege money corrupts the elections and the rest of the political process. As a point of reference they point out the $6 billion spent on last fall’s presidential campaign, which went down as the most expensive election campaign in history, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the Center for Responsive Politics.
“This is absolutely an issue that crosses party lines,” Subeck said.
For more information, visit unitedwisconsin.com.
The proposal
Below is the language of the referendums being proposed for the April 2014 ballots in Delavan, Elkhorn and Lake Geneva:
Resolved, the city … calls for reclaiming democracy from the corrupting effects of undue corporate influence by amending the United States Constitution to establish that:
1. Only human beings, not corporations, unions, nonprofit organizations nor similar associations, are entitled to constitutional rights, and
2. Money is not speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech.
Be it further resolved that we hereby instruct our state and federal representatives to enact resolutions and legislation to advance this effort.
