Our View: Vote ‘yes’ on Question 1 to send an important message

Posted October 13

The Editorial Board

If Maine can play a leading role in bringing some order and fairness to political spending nationally, we should seize the chance.

QUESTION 1: An Act to Limit Contributions to Political Action Committees That Make Independent Expenditures, Do you want to set a $5,000 limit for giving to political action committees that spend money independently to support or defeat candidates for office?

The first question on Maine’s ballot this year is the product of a citizen initiative; more than 75,000 people lent their signatures to a petition, turned in this past January, to bring the question to a vote. As it stands, Maine state law limits contributions to candidates, not political action committees that spend to elect or defeat candidates.

It is time to impose a limit.

The proposed $5,000 spending limit would apply only to political action committees’ (PACs, more commonly, by now a household-name feature of our politics) spending on races involving candidates. It would place no cap on what individuals or groups could donate to ballot question committees or to political party committees.

This leaves more than enough leeway, in our view, for political contributions of other kinds. Question 1, if passed, will be challenged in the courts, which is by design; its supporters have their sights set on a new Supreme Court ruling. Mainers have, time and again, made clear their dissatisfaction with the unbridled influence of money in politics, be it in the form of the PAC or the Super PAC, as a 2023 survey revealed, or in the form of foreign spending on referendum campaigns – a ban on which was supported by more than 86% of voters last November.

Ours would be the first state in the nation since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010 to move to limit contributions to PACs that can make independent expenditures. We believe that political spending has spiraled out of control, in many cases, and that the absence of any limit on PACs is inappropriate and leaves America’s system of campaigning and voting vulnerable to the whims of bad actors. If Maine can play a leading role in bringing some order and fairness to political spending nationally, we should seize the chance.

https://www.centralmaine.com/2024/10/13/our-view-vote-yes-on-question-1-to-send-an-important-message/