John Brautigam and Ron Fein: Maine should ban political spending by foreign-influenced corporations
As the first state to pass ranked-choice voting and public funding of elections, Maine has led the nation before in the fight for democratic self-government. It’s time for Maine to lead again.
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Ron Fein
The Maine Legislature is considering a bill to ban political spending by corporations that are partly owned by foreign entities. Here’s why they should do that — and why the arguments raised by the bill’s corporate opponents don’t hold water.
Most people agree that foreign entities shouldn’t be able to influence our elections. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Russian military intelligence, a Canadian energy conglomerate, or a collection of European financiers. In fact, the leading court decision, written by then-Judge (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh and later upheld by the Supreme Court, involved a Canadian who wanted to print some election flyers and pass them around New York’s Central Park. But, as Kavanaugh explained, foreign entities “do not have a constitutional right to participate in, and thus may be excluded from, activities of democratic self-government,” including “the campaign process that seeks to influence how voters will cast their ballots in the elections.”