On balance, the Supreme Court's decision in Citizen's United vs FEC harms the election process

Perhaps the most fundamental argument the Pro can make is that Citizens United has increased the amount of money present in national elections, and thus expanded the ability of the rich to drown out the speech of the rest of us. While money has always been a major factor in modern elections (and probably always will be) Citizens United allows it to play a much more direct and unregulated role. Previously outside groups were limited in the kinds of ads they could run and the amounts of money they could collect from specific sources. In the 2012 Presidential election most of the largest Super PACs collected far more than 90% of their money from donors giving more than $25,000 at once.7 The ability of a single wealthy individual or corporation to inject millions of dollars into the political system significantly affects the perceived legitimacy of that system and gives the perception that people's political voices are proportional to their pocketbooks. This also decreases citizens' ability to make meaningful choices between candidates, as the only candidates likely to have these massive fund ds supporting them are those who are amenable to the rich. Candidates with policies that are aggressively opposed to the aristocracy are almost inevitably drown out by these groups, meaning that the voters never truly get the option to find out about - and thus choose - candidates who do not propose policies broadly favorable to the rich.While the role of Citizens United on national elections has received significant coverage, perhaps more significant is the effect it can have on local elections. The smaller the race, the more impact a large amount of money can have. Since large corporations tend to have interests spread out in various parts of the country, it is possible for them to target specific House or Senate races in districts in which they do business and coerce the cooperation of local Representatives by threatening to fund or 7 http://www.nytimes.com... a Super PAC that supports an opponent. Imagine a scenario in which a company wants certain regulations on its business eased. That company can go to a Representative who sits on a relevant committee and suggest that if the Representative does not support the company's wishes the company will spend millions of dollars endorsing a challenger to that representative. In this scenario the corporation does not even need to spend any money to impose its will on the government, merely the threat of being able to so severely effect the electoral system could be enough to get its way. While government officials bowing to the will of corporate interests is nothing new, the sheer scale on which a corporation can now impact a local election greatly expands this risk. The more the election system can be used as a tool to unduly influence politicians the less legitimacy it possesses.A third argument many Pro teams may consider deals not just with the quantity of political ads outside groups can produce, but rather with their quality. When a campaign creates an ad that is wildly inaccurate or culturally unacceptable, the candidate can be directly challenged about that ad in interviews and debates and forced to defend it. This creates a degree of risk for campaigns that helps to discourage them from providing blatantly inaccurate information to the public. When a group the candidate does not have any official control over produces such an ad, the candidate can deflect any criticism of the ad because he or she had no role in producing or approving it. Now that Citizens United has opened the floodgates of funding for these outside groups it has massively increased the degree of disinformation being distributed. An effective election process is dependent on an informed public, and the increase in disinformation being propagated following Citizens United has done significant harm to the electoral system.One important concept for the Pro to keep in mind throughout this debate is that the resolution is ultimately about whether Citizens United makes things better or worse. Many of these problems existed before, but the Pro only needs to show that Citizens United makes them worse, not that it created them entirely. There will always be money, corruption and disinformation in politics – the question is whether there is more or less of that post-Citizens United