Campaigns for elected officials in America cost money. Billboards, television advertisements, lawn signs, and campaign staffers are just a few of the varying costs associated with attempting to reach the electorate of a city, state or the entire country. Recent Supreme Court cases, such as Citizens United, have claimed that donations to political campaigns are a form of free speech and therefore cannot be abridged under the Constitution of the United States. This allows for corporations as well as the extremely wealthy to donate as much as they wish to campaigns for local and federal positions. It is human nature to do favors for those who helped one reach a position of power and under this system the wealthy and corporations have much more sway over these people. The average American cannot afford to make donations at rates close to those donations made by elites. This leads to a system in America that favors the wealthy and disregards what is best for most of the American people and what they want. In a representative democracy, such as America the will of the people should be priority number one in the eyes of politicians, but that is merely a pipe dream now. This problem is not on minds of many Americans as they are stuck in the mindset that this problem cannot be fixed. To ameliorate the problem of big money donations influencing the political system in the United States, a constitutional amendment is necessary to create clean elections without the influence of corporate or elite money because the American government no longer serves its people as it was designed.

The United States government panders to the wealthy class alone when decisions on policy are made. Due to unlimited campaign contributions, the wealthy have most of the influence on legislators when it is time for them to make their decisions. “A 2013 study found that the top .01% of political donors accounted for accounted for more than 40% of campaign contributions.” In the 1980s this number was as low as 10% (Schmitt). This shows that the influence of wealthy donors is rising drastically. The wealthy are always going to have more money to give and therefore have more influence than the general population, but numbers this large create a conflict in the system. According to Schmitt the top .01% of donors are just 24,000 people. In America, there are over 350 million people and the smallest sliver of that is nearing half of the influence politically. Campaigns need to be financed for one to get placed into power and politicians are more than willing to craft policies that reflect the ideas of their donors. Martin Gilens conducted a survey in which he attempted to find a difference in the desired policy outcomes for the lower and higher classes in America and compare them to the policies that were implemented in America. Gilens asked people from different classes over 1,700 questions to gather the data for his study. He concluded that a democratic system of government would produce different results than that of a system that favors the wealthy and excludes the middle class and the poor (340). He states that public policy does not reflect the opinions of poor Americans and that the affluent seem to be the only ones who have a great influence over such policy (340). This shows that there is an undue amount of influence wielded by the very wealthy in this country. To combine the two studies one can easily extrapolate that 24,000 people have political influence greater than the other 350 million people in the United States. The rhetoric in America remains the same that the country is a democracy and Americans should be proud to be citizens of a country that is the first of its kind. The constitution is heralded as a world changing document, but the country continues to defy its values. Representation is a large part of the American system, but the system is failing if it represents so few of its citizens. 

The American ideal of “for the people by the people” is not being met anymore due to the influence of money in politics. The country is now a for the rich by the rich system in which politicians and donors work hand and hand disregarding the will of the average person. The current President Donald Trump’s various cabinet picks prove that the American government is not representing the people as it should. Many of the picks for President Trump’s cabinet, along with their families, donated great sums of money to Donald Trump and other republican members in the house of representatives and the senate. Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education and her family gave huge amounts of money to Trump and other republicans for their elections. Todd Ricketts, Rex Tillerson and Steve Mnuchin all gave large amounts of money to republicans including Trump during the 2016 election season through their own personal wealth or companies they ran (Torres-Spelliscy). Torres-Spelliscy makes the point that the idea that these big money donors who are given positions of power are going to do what is best for the American people is naïve. Not only are policies being crafted in the best interest of the donors, but now they are being crafted by the donors themselves. This system of government does not favor the American people as those without the ability to write large checks have little influence in the way that the country is run even things that are going to affect them. The former first lady, Michelle Obama, even stated that there is only one way to influence the political system of the United States “Write a big, fat check… Write the biggest, fattest check that you can possibly write” (Schmitt).  This candid phrase by someone who is entrenched in the system says everything that needs to be said. She was not exaggerating because it is estimated that the 2016 elections in total cost ten billion dollars (Ganji). Average Americans do not have the resources to fund that type of expenditure. That is why the American people no longer have a say in the government that they are supposed to lead. A simple vote does not solve this problem as both major political parties are heavily influenced by these donors and the donors also infiltrate the government to important positions of power as well. There is only one way to enact something that stands are permanent law in the United States.  The way to do that is to amend the constitution. The only way for the American people to be truly represented is to remove money from special interests out of the election process and the only way to safely do that is to amend the constitution to mandate that elections are free of elite donations. 

Americans are vulnerable to the money behind election campaigns even if they do not realize it. American elections are thought of as intellectual debates among learned people on the direction the country should be moving when it comes to policy decisions. This appears not to be true if one looks at the data behind the funding of campaigns. Per Anthony Gierzynski and Davis Breaux, two professors of political science, a non-incumbent looking to fill a legislative seat in a state government or as a representative from a state must raise large amounts of money in order to overcome the inherent deficit of competing against the incumbent (213). “The need to raise substantial amounts of money to win elections may also make legislators more dependent on those who make contributions, skewing the results of the legislative process in favor of the interests that are able to make large contributions” (Gierzynski 213). The data unquestionably suggests that due to the necessary nature of money in campaign elections currently present in the United States, people that are able to fund these campaigns are given preferential treatment by the people they donate to. These excludes a majority of American citizens from the national conversation and people are stuck in a system that does not listen to their voices or concerns.

The amount of money needed to mount a successful campaign is troubling because it filters out candidates that would better represent different portions of the American population. According to Benjamin Page, a political science professor from Northwestern University there are many different ways that money can influence the type of candidates that are electable. Page says that money filters out centrist candidates because they would not be able to raise enough money in party primary elections to run a successful campaign. The donors in primaries tend to hold stronger views than that of most people and look for the most partisan candidates possible (Page). To most people this may sound par for the course, but this filtering removes candidates more willing to work for the American people as opposed to working for their own interests and the interests of their parties or donors. People that act purely as partisans like the people that are most easily able to receive campaign donations are working for party goals and not the American people. The American people deserve politicians on national and state levels to work in their best interest and the interest of the entire country. The need for money also makes it harder for people on the economic left to get into office. Big money donors tend to be from people who have a large personal fortune and who tend to have conservative leanings on taxes as well as social welfare spending and economic regulation (Page). When taxes on the wealthy are higher there is more money for social welfare spending and the lower class is not as adversely affected. This makes candidates who represent the people that need the most help less likely to get into office because they cannot fund their campaigns properly. This makes for a larger population of people to go without someone representing their needs in America. This problem needs to stop because a representative democracy is broken when that many people go underrepresented or not represented at all. This necessitates a change that will not come from a law or supreme court decision that can be overruled or changed. The constitution needs to be amended to mandate clean elections free of elite money. This will make for candidates that truly represent the people that voted for them and not the money that put them into power. 

America has turned into a government that is controlled by the wealthy which essentially makes the United States an oligarchy. Former President Jimmy Carter said that America is an “Oligarchy with unlimited political bribery” and “we have seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election is over” (Secular Talk). This was said in an interview and Secular Talk host Kyle Kulinski who has a political science degree from Iona College took that interview and ran it in his show to comment on. Those are strong words by the former president talking about the bastardization of the American political system to help special interests. Kulinski goes on to agree with the former president and cites the Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page study and quotes “Ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States” (Secular Talk). Kulinski goes on to say that the fact that ordinary people do not get the policy outcomes that they want makes America an oligarchy. He uses the example of minimum wage to make his point. He says that the American people are overwhelmingly in favor of a minimum wage increase (80% approval), but have failed to get it pushed through because of special interests (Secular Talk). Donors are generally from the employer class and keeping minimum wage low would benefit them at the detriment of more Americans who work low wage jobs. This goes to show that America can no longer talk about the beauty of its democracy because the democracy is fading. Another example is in the 2012 elections climate change was rarely mentioned by either Presidential candidate. Oil companies spend millions of dollars every year on lobbyists and on political donations to make sure that climate change is not fully discussed in a way that will hurt their business (Mogulescu).  An oligarchy has formed and the elite bend politicians to do their bidding. Politicians listen to the people that put them into power because the system dictates that they would not be able to reach high political positions and they know that. The United States is the epitome of democracy in a lot of Americans eyes, but even the former president must acknowledge that to maintain that vision of America change needs to occur. An amendment to the constitution is the only way to end the oligarchy and restore political power back to the average American. 

There is a contention that money in politics does not disadvantage anyone and that America is not an oligarchy. An article by Dylan Matthews who is a contributor to Vox, states that a study was done to counteract the research done by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page. The researchers in this study conducted opinion polls on bills and asked people from different classes whether they support them. The researchers found that the rich’s “win” rate on bills they favor is slightly higher than other classes, but that it is not “a robust one” (Matthews). They found that the difference was not enough to say that the rich are definitively favored. Matthews then goes on to say that “Most Americans aren’t very politically engaged… preferring that professional policymakers make decisions for them, so long as the economy stays on track.” This point has its merits, but there is a fallacy in the study done to support it. The study that Dylan Matthews uses asks Americans about their opinion on bills being voted on in state or federal legislatures, but does not consider all the possible bills that could be put into place if the money never infiltrated the system in the first place. Americans never get the chance to see bills because candidates that would support them would never be found in office. There are only so many bills that can be written and enacted and the American system puts the special interest groups first when considering bills to write. The donor class gets to decide who is writing and submitting bills before the average American can ever decide what their opinion is on those bills. Americans need stronger control of who gets elected and who represents them. The donor class sets the rules of the game before it even begins in their own favor. 

Patrick Flavin says that “Political equality remains an essential yardstick for evaluating the quality of a democracy” (84). America would be a better place if everyone was given equal representation and political donations became a distant memory. The current political system in America allows for the wealthy and elite to have most if not all the sway on who is elected and what bills they put into law. America has become an oligarchy and the average person in the United States has no say in the government that affects them directly. The only way to change this is to amend the constitution and make elections donation free. Elections would change into debates between ideas between candidates with their eyes set on making people’s lives better. An America with clean elections is an America that returns to the representative democracy roots of its constitution. The United States is meant to be a country run by its citizens. Making elections clean will achieve that goal and make a brighter future for everyone. 
