Nearly thirty-five years ago, in the midst of the civil rights movement, the Supreme Court stated that wealth cannot serve as a barrier to the right to vote. Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth. This time, the question concerned a system of high filing fees that the state of Texas required candidates to pay in order to appear on the primary ballot. The Court invalidated the system on Equal Protection grounds. And just four years ago, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its landmark rulings in Harper and Bullock .
Judicial intervention is now necessary to address the newest wealth barrier to our democracy.
Our current system of financing electoral campaigns now stands where the poll tax and the high candidate filing fee systems once stood. It is the newest voting rights barrier. Return to the outline at the top of this page. We can take guidance from the Court's ruling in Bullock . If the primary is part of the democratic process, so too is the electoral campaign, including all the fundraising, that leads up to the primary and the general election.