RESOLVED: The Citizens United ruling undermines democracy in the United States.

Thank you to my partner, for the concise presentation. I shall answer the rebuttals, but first I must put forward several additional negative effects that the CUD has had on our democratic institutions.He asks that I be very specific indeed when I say that this decision undermines our ability to equally and democratically influence the government. My previous specificity seems to be inadequate. Therefore:Democracy cannot coexist with plutocracy. By making American federal elections more dependent upon the will of the wealthy few, the will of the many is necessarily diminished. The Citizens United decision gives free reign to influence our government to Sultans and CEOs, and opens elected offices to a legal bidding war. We do not elect oil barons and billionaires. They should not be writing our laws and setting our policy. But they do. This is plutocratic, not democratic.I shall dwell this round upon the critical fact that I put forward in R1: More than 80% of all federal elections are won by the politician with the most money. What this means to democracy is terrifying. What CU does to this already bad situation is to make it much worse. To be clear, this democratic decrepitude predates CU. But since the decision, this problem has grown exponentially. 1. The influence of money in elections is not disputed by my partner, who seems unconcerned. However, this influence makes it virtually impossible for any member of the middle class to ever win election to federal office. This is antidemocratic in that the vast majority of Americans are effectively excluded from holding political office. CU makes this problem worse, by effectively barring even the upper-middle class from office.2. I will agree that American voters are ultimately able to decide how to cast a ballot. But I deny that this is a necessary and sufficient component of democracy. CU eliminates most candidates from voter endorsement or scrutiny long before any ballots are cast. Here's how. 80% of all federal elections are won by the best funded candidate. Those potential candidates who lack high-level funding cannot compete, and therefore cannot win support from either major party. This means they will never be tested by voters. The CUD magnifies this anti-democratic paradigm, by increasing the amount of money required to be competitive.3. Even if voters retain the ability to cast legally binding votes, we have no ability to select from a wide pool of candidates, thanks to the need to field only the most well-funded candidates. Merely by allowing more money into our democracy, CU makes worse the need for additional funding. This means that voters may only select from an ever shallowing pool of increasingly wealthy candidates. 4. My partner argues that the electorate has a few feeble abilities left to it. But these should never be considered the totality of democracy. When a constituent visits the office of her congressman at the same time as a billionaire or donor, she knows that she will be made to wait. This is plutocracy, and it is as wrong as it is anti-democratic. The CUD worsens this situation, by increasing the need for constituents to beseech their congress, cash in hand, in order to have their democratic demands heeded.5. CU has overturned two decades of legal precedent, and has rendered unconstitutional sixty years of public law – eliminating the will of the people in all of these cases. There can be no definition of ‘democracy’ that includes such an act. [3] In the state of Montana, voters have issued repeated democratic demands that their politicians be disallowed to accept these massive gifts that are intended to influence their policy making while in office. Again and again, CU has prevented this legislation. By throwing out the will of the people, and rendering such demands impotent, CU also renders democracy itself impotent. [4] Under Citizens United, democracy is often unconstitutional. Rebuttals It may be the case that my partner here is attempting to make the case that:"The CUD is an inanimate object. It can only harm democracy if it is obeyed." If this is the case, then I must concede to the semantics. The only useful laws are the enforced ones.SpecificityA recurring defense presented by my partner as an answer to my initial argument, (that no matter what, CU will diminish the right to speech, by monetizing it or restricting it) again - never refuted, was that my example is never quite specific enough. This has allowed him to discuss 'something' in response to my argument, but we must note that the specific example I present has been allowed to stand. The character count limit simply prevents the type of comprehensive and scholarly specificity that my partner seems to require. We all know this. Therefore, this type of tactic should be seen as a catch-all dodge. "To assume that funding assures victory is absurd."My partner makes this statement, possibly in an attempt to answer the fact that I presented, "80% of all Federal elections are won by the best funded candidate." As a statement of fact, this is, or is not, true. I have presented evidence that it is; in order to successfully refute this fact, my partner must demonstrate that it is false. It is not sufficient to simply say that it is absurd. In fairness, my figure of 80% of federal elections being won by the candidate who has found the most money is low: the number is historically much higher than I say. [5]Is there any evidence that the CUD is actively increasing the amount of money on politics? Can it be demonstrated that the public faith in elected officials is lower after the CUD? Yes. [1] The public’s confidence in Congress is historically low. Money, and it’s corrupting back-room influence, has surged. [2]My partner argues that attempts to influence voters are fair game. I agree fully. But the decisions that create legislation do not come from voters, but also from donors. Shall we go over evidence that highly-positioned lobbyists guide politicians as laws are drafted? I think that this is so obvious that no such investigation is required. By making this problem so much worse, the CUD damages democracy. Money buys elections. Citizens United makes this worse."My opponent makes the argument that money buys elections byproviding the statistic that 80% of candidates with themost money win the elections. However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this." This argument makes the case that there is "absolutely nothing wrong" with oil barons wining and dining congressmen on Caribbean beaches with unlimited corporate funding. I want to point out:1. Fewer Americans are donating to electioneering. The few that are, thanks to CU, are donating more than the GDP of small nations. Only 0.23% of Americans donate more than $200, yet this tiny minority delivers a staggering 66.3% of all of those hundreds of millions of dollars to political candidates. [6]2. Nations, backing corporations based in America, can use money taxed away from their citizens to conduct electioneering and back room bribery in the US - thanks to CU. Not even American corporations can compete with that level of funding.3. These two facts disprove the argument that more money necessarily proves popular support. Americans do not "support" the Congress. As the polls prove. At least not as much as Americans supported King George. [1] http://www.realclearpolitics.com...[2] [3] http://www.brennancenter.org...[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com...[5] http://www.politifact.com...[6] http://desertbeacon.wordpress.com...