Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/13pdf/12-536_e1pf.pdf
Page Number: 30.0

24 

MCCUTCHEON v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N 

Opinion of ROBERTS, C. J. 

diminished, and with it the potential for corruption. 

It is not clear how many candidates a PAC must support 
before  our  dedicated  donor  can  avoid  being  tagged  with 
the  impermissible  knowledge  that  “a  substantial  portion” 
of his contribution will go to Smith.  But imagine that the
donor  is  one  of  ten  equal  donors  to  a  PAC  that  gives  the 
highest  possible  contribution  to  Smith.8    The  PAC  may 
give  no  more  than  $2,600  per  election  to  Smith.    Of  that 
sum, just $260 will be attributable to the donor intent on 
circumventing  the  base  limits.    Thus  far  he  has  hardly 
succeeded  in  funneling  “massive  amounts  of  money”  to 
Smith.  Buckley, supra, at 38. 

But what if this donor does the same thing via, say, 100 
different  PACs?    His  $260  contribution  will  balloon  to 
$26,000,  ten  times  what  he  may  contribute  directly  to 
Smith in any given election.

This  100-PAC  scenario  is  highly  implausible.    In  the 
first instance, it is not true that the individual donor will 
necessarily have access to a sufficient number of PACs to
effectuate such a scheme.  There are many PACs, but they 
are  not  limitless.    For  the  2012  election  cycle,  the  FEC 
reported about 2,700 nonconnected PACs (excluding PACs 
that  finance  independent  expenditures  only).    And  not 
every PAC  that supports Smith will work in this scheme:
For  our  donor’s  pro rata  share  of  a  PAC’s  contribution  to
Smith to remain meaningful, the PAC must be funded by
only  a  small  handful  of  donors.    The  antiproliferation
rules, which were not in effect when Buckley was decided, 
prohibit  our  donor  from  creating  100  pro-Smith  PACs  of 
his own, or collaborating with the nine other donors to do 

—————— 

8 Even  those  premises  are  generous  because  they  assume  that  the
donor  contributes  to  non-multicandidate  PACs,  which  are  relatively 
rare.    Multicandidate  PACs,  by  contrast,  must  have  more  than  50
contributors.    11  CFR  §100.5(e)(3).    The  more  contributors,  of  course, 
the  more  the  donor’s  share  in  any  eventual  contribution  to  Smith  is
diluted.