Citizens United versus Federal Election Commision

Before I began with my opening argument, I want Pro to ask himself this question:"What is the First Amendment?"Now then, let us begin round 1 of the tournament!Topic: "On balance, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission harms the election process."The decision would never harm the election because without it, the entire principal that the United States is all about would be completely wrong! The First Amendment would be completely irrelevant, making all of the country's ideals, dreams, and identity wrong!To truly understand what I mean, we’ll need to get to the meat of this. The Supreme Court's decision was a 5-4 ruling that overruled the ban on independent expenditures and financing electioneering communications. [1]To understand where this case came from, we will need to look at the past. In the year 2002, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act) became effective, changing the election process as we had known. All we need to look at is the section of electioneering communications. One of the characteristics is "The communication is distributed during a specific time period before an election - within 30 days prior to a primary election or 60 days prior to a general election.". [2]Before the 2008 election, the nonprofit organization Citizens United Productions produced a documentary called Hillary: The Movie which was very critical of Hillary Clinton, whom was running at the time for the democratic nominee. The problem was that this documentary fell under BCRA's definition of an electioneering communications. [3] Now then with all of the history that is needed to know for this debate, let us began.One thing must be known, in the 2012 election, the Citizens United vs. FED ruling, did not affect it at all. [4] The success rate in the general election was a mere 6.6%, which is a very small number. Thus the ruling doesn't harm the election process.Another thing is that Senator Kennedy had said these important words near the end of the trial: “If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.” [5] This brings me back to one of the first things I said. What is the First Amendment? It is the freedom of religion, speech, petition, and assembly. The important part here is speech. We have the freedom of speech to engage in political speech. Even if it occurred 30 days before a primary, or 60 days before a general election.Remember that this decision did not make it legal for companies to spend on contributions. The reason was so that corruption did not occur or look like it could occur. [1]Finally, the decision made it so that corporations as well as labor unions could spend as much money as they wanted too, and could advertise a candidate as positive or negative. This is free speech! And no law, could, can, of should be made against it. This way, no matter what, the court decision can not harm the election process. It is after all, just advertisement that occurs closer to the election.It is free speech, it didn’t affect the 2012 election, contributions are still illegal, and it is just advertisement. If these four things can harm the election process, then the election process is broken already.I wish my opponent good luck on the rebuttal. May the best debater win and the loser learn from this debate!SOURCES1. http://www.publicintegrity.org...2. http://www.fec.gov...3. https://www.law.cornell.edu...4. http://www.opensecrets.org...5. http://www.newyorker.com...