Super pacs harm the election process.

In order to be fair i will refrain from posting a rebutall this round. Before I start I would like to offer one sole observation: 1) As noted by political watchdog the electoral knowledge the three pillars of any electoral process are voter participation, informed citizens and transparency. Contention 1: The Citizens united ruling increase voter turnout. According to "the Center for Responsive Politics, in the 2012 presidential race over $380,000,000 have been raised by super PACs and $330,000,000 have been spent".This money according to the wall street journal is so super PACs can run advertisements for or against political candidates.. This is important because these advertisements are essential for maintaining voter turnout according to Paul freedman of the University of Virginia "respondents were as much as 10 percentages Points more likely to vote if they watched television in media Markets that were bombarded with presidential ads". Furthermore, according to Dr. Hillygus of Duke University "Among those who early in the campaign did not intend to vote, exposure to ads increased intentions to vote by 18 percentage points". The impact of this is that by increasing voter turnout we get a more accurate representation of the publics will which is the purpose of the election process. Contention 2: citizens united allows voters to make informed decisions According to political scientist David Downing "without freedom of media and wider freedom of speech people cannot make informed decisions on how they should vote". This is important because according to Hans von Spakovsky, former member of the Federal Election Commission "many associations we have in this country (no matter which side of the political aisle they are on), from the NAACP to the Sierra Club to the National Rifle Association, are also corporations. Yet those corporate associations were prohibited under penalty of criminal and civil sanctions from expressing the views of their members. This means that before this landmark decisions many important organizations where barred from expressing their opinions and thus the public lacked vital information that may have significantly affected the outcome of previous elections. Lastly this increase in corporate spending does not favor either political party since according to matt bia a correspondent for the new York times campaign spending tends to be cyclical since when one party increases its spending the other party tends to mobilize and increase its spending. Thus not only does citizen united create more informed voters but it also prevents any one party from gaining an advantage. Contention 3: Citizens united increases transparency According to the center for political accountability 85% of company"s increased their disclosure over the last election cycle and there has been an 11% overall increase in disclosure rates. David Weigel a correspondent for the Washington post supports this consensus and notes "there's more information out there about super PAC donors than there is about virtually any other kind of campaign fundraising. The impact of this increased transparency is twofold: sub point a) Transparency reduces political corruption, as noted by political watchdog the electoral knowledge "Transparency makes institutional systems and the actions/decisions they take widely accessible and understood [and] It is difficult to maintain or publicly justify a system that permits abuse and corruption". This corruption is devastating to the democratic process as noted social advocate John Samuel states "The subversion, misuse and abuse of power tends to undermine the process and content of the democratic process" sub point b) Transparency allows voters to maintain confidence in our democratic system according to John Wonderlich of the sunlight foundation "Public knowledge of the money flowing into our politics is absolutely fundamental to public accountability in campaigns and elections, [because] without it we can"t properly" maintain confidence in our democratic system". Voter confidence is essential because as Lonna Atkeson of the University of New Mexico notes "If voters do not have faith in this most fundamental aspect of a democratic society " then the legitimacy of representative government might be at risk" and If we can"t even trust are representatives then we have completely undermined the entire purpose of the election process. Thus for all the aforementioned reasons I urge a con ballot. Sources: http://blog.heritage.org... http://www.slate.com... https://docs.google.com... http://www.nytimes.com... http://www.bowdoin.edu... http://jurist.org... http://aceproject.org... http://news.yahoo.com... http://infochangeindia.org... http://sunlightfoundation.com... http://aceproject.org... http://aceproject.org...