Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy is reach­ing a break­ing point, from failed win­ner-take-all vot­ing rules to bla­tant attempts to sup­press vot­er turnout. The ris­ing tor­rent of cam­paign spend­ing by the 1% has trig­gered par­tic­u­lar outrage.

Do lines have to be drawn about what is permissible and what is not? Yes. Unless you have zero regulation, you have to have some kind of line-drawing to determine what’s electioneering and what’s not.

Activists leapt into action after the Supreme Court’s Jan­u­ary 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion, which not only over­turned a cen­tu­ry of prece­dent that barred cor­po­rate mon­ey in Amer­i­can elec­tions, but also enshrined cor­po­ra­tions as non-human enti­ties that have the same con­sti­tu­tion­al rights as people.

Since Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and oth­er court rul­ings lim­it what can be done by statute, amend­ing the con­sti­tu­tion to over­turn these rul­ings has become a major focus of activists. A coali­tion of advo­ca­cy groups was recent­ly suc­cess­ful in push­ing for­ward the Democ­ra­cy For All Amend­ment, which would allow reg­u­la­tion of cam­paign spend­ing, includ­ing a restora­tion of the ban on cor­po­rate mon­ey in elec­tions. In Sep­tem­ber, the Sen­ate vot­ed 54 to 42 in favor, with Democ­rats in sup­port and Repub­li­cans all opposed. Although that was short of the required two-thirds nec­es­sary for an amend­ment to pass, it rep­re­sent­ed the first time in decades that Sen­ate Democ­rats have vot­ed for con­sti­tu­tion­al change.

Some activists argue, how­ev­er, that the pro­posed amend­ment doesn’t go far enough and are call­ing for action on mea­sures like the People’s Rights Amend­ment, which takes on the doc­trine of cor­po­rate con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. Oth­ers wor­ry that amend­ment cam­paigns detract from efforts to win imme­di­ate fed­er­al and state statu­to­ry changes.

To explore dif­fer­ences in strat­e­gy, Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor Jamie Raskin and I spoke with lead­ers of three orga­ni­za­tions that play cen­tral roles in the dri­ve for con­sti­tu­tion­al action: Robert Weiss­man, pres­i­dent of Pub­lic Cit­i­zen; Kaitlin Sopoci-Belk­nap, nation­al direc­tor of Move to Amend; and John Boni­faz, pres­i­dent of Free Speech For Peo­ple.

What was the sig­nif­i­cance of the recent vote on the Democ­ra­cy For All amendment?

Robert: It was his­toric. We went from four Sen­ate spon­sors in 2010 to 55 back­ing the mea­sure today (one of whom couldn’t be there for the vote), spurred on by the fact of the sys­tem being so hor­ri­bly cor­rupt­ed, but also by pub­lic clam­or for action. More than 550 cities and towns and 16 states have passed res­o­lu­tions or equiv­a­lent mea­sures call­ing for an amend­ment. We had more than 150 street demon­stra­tions in a sin­gle day.

But as much orga­niz­ing as we’ve done, it’s not been enough to force Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress to break away from their lead­er­ship — even Repub­li­cans who are plain­ly opposed to the cur­rent cam­paign finance sys­tem and who almost cer­tain­ly in their hearts do favor an amendment.

In this polar­ized envi­ron­ment, win­ning the nec­es­sary votes to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion — a two-thirds vote in each house of Con­gress and the approval of three-quar­ters of state leg­is­la­tures — will be chal­leng­ing. What will it take?

Kaitlin: It’s going to take a move­ment. It’s not going to be led by peo­ple who are in office, or even estab­lish­ment orga­ni­za­tions that are work­ing with peo­ple who are in office.

John: We must build a transpar­ti­san move­ment that reflects how this is a deeply Amer­i­can issue that cuts across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, that impacts the con­cerns of peo­ple what­ev­er their par­ty affil­i­a­tion. We have more work to do on that front.

Robert: We need to force Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors to be respon­sive to the grass­roots demand from their own base. Polls show Repub­li­cans over­whelm­ing­ly hate Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and the cur­rent cam­paign finance system.

With the right to vote under attack via vot­er ID laws and oth­er mea­sures, there’s also a pro­posed amend­ment, HJ Res 44, to put an explic­it right to vote in the Con­sti­tu­tion. Do you see this as part of your movement?

Kaitlin: We absolute­ly need a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to vote, [and it fits with] our core imper­a­tive: a move­ment to look at how to make gov­ern­ment serve the people.

John: Yes. The right to vote includes the right to equal and mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion in the entire elec­tion process, not just Elec­tion Day. Because can­di­dates can’t be com­pet­i­tive with­out access to wealth, we have an effec­tive ​“wealth pri­ma­ry” that excludes equal and mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion by peo­ple with­out that access.

Also on the table is the People’s Rights Amend­ment, which reg­u­lates cor­po­rate per­son­hood. Do you see val­ue in com­bin­ing all of the var­i­ous amend­ments into a sin­gle big prodemoc­ra­cy amendment?

Kaitlin: Yes. We’re very con­cerned that this will all get lumped into a cam­paign finance move­ment. Although Cit­i­zens Unit­ed did involve cam­paign finance, it also dealt with cor­po­rate con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. We think the Con­sti­tu­tion must be amend­ed to unequiv­o­cal­ly end cor­po­rate con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and mon­ey as speech, because these doc­trines make mean­ing­ful democ­ra­cy impos­si­ble. We’ve pledged not to sign our name to any pro­pos­al that doesn’t address these two points whol­ly and completely.

John: We sup­port both the Democ­ra­cy For All amend­ment and the People’s Rights Amend­ment. If the pow­er of the move­ment push­es these amend­ments into one, that’s great, but not nec­es­sary: The his­to­ry of con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments in this coun­try has shown that there are often times more than one amend­ment that gets pro­posed and enact­ed in one era.

Robert: I don’t share Kaitlin’s fear that the ener­gy will only get direct­ed toward cam­paign finance, though I think that cam­paign finance demands urgent atten­tion. But I do agree that what made Cit­i­zens Unit­ed dis­tinct from cam­paign finance issues is that it made the prob­lem of cor­po­rate pow­er cen­tral. The amend­ment solu­tion has excit­ed peo­ple in part because it’s a con­crete way to take on the prob­lem of cor­po­rate pow­er, which feels so out of people’s control.

One argu­ment for con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment dri­ves is that they can become an impe­tus for oth­er reforms. Do you see this move­ment lead­ing to more imme­di­ate change?

John: Yes. The broad­er amend­ment move­ment is the over­ar­ch­ing engine for a host of reforms — pub­lic fund­ing of elec­tions, greater dis­clo­sure, engag­ing the pub­lic, and tying reform to oth­er impor­tant democ­ra­cy move­ments such as vot­ing rights, elim­i­nat­ing ger­ry­man­der­ing and fair­er vot­ing rules like pro­por­tion­al representation.

Kaitlin: We’re excit­ed by com­mu­ni­ty action to con­nect claims of cor­po­rate rights to rel­e­vant issues like frack­ing and cor­po­rate farming.

With our society’s huge dis­par­i­ties of wealth, rich peo­ple can always spend more mon­ey to influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion — from Fox News to con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks. When an indi­vid­ual wants to release con­tent that can be inter­pret­ed as attack­ing cer­tain politi­cians, what’s to be regulated?

Robert: The Democ­ra­cy For All Amend­ment would per­mit reg­u­la­tion of spend­ing by bil­lion­aires as well as cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing in ways that go beyond the spend­ing facil­i­tat­ed by Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. It would per­mit, for exam­ple, the reg­u­la­tion of self-financed can­di­dates. Do lines have to be drawn about what is per­mis­si­ble and what is not? Yes. Unless you have zero reg­u­la­tion, you have to have some kind of line-draw­ing to deter­mine what’s elec­tion­eer­ing and what’s not. We do this in the cur­rent sys­tem, even post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. Most of those ques­tions aren’t hard. Whether to reg­u­late the core set of things affect­ing our elec­tion sys­tem — Shel­don Adelson’s abil­i­ty to spend $90 mil­lion through super PACs—is not a hard question.

What will be your focus in the com­ing year?

John: One is action in red­der states. Also, we will con­tin­ue to chal­lenge in court cor­po­rate claims to con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, like defend­ing Vermont’s label­ing law on GMOs against Mon­san­to and defend­ing a St. Louis bal­lot ini­tia­tive against Peabody Energy.

Robert: We need more orga­niz­ing to suc­ceed. The amend­ment orga­niz­ing is help­ing pro­pel oth­er cam­paign finance-relat­ed cam­paigns, includ­ing efforts to win pub­lic financ­ing and bet­ter dis­clo­sure — most impor­tant­ly through an SEC rul­ing on cor­po­rate spending.

Kaitlin: We’re mak­ing this a lit­mus test for get­ting elect­ed and bird-dog­ging can­di­dates. If you don’t sup­port end­ing cor­po­rate con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and mon­ey as speech, then we need oth­er can­di­dates to run. We must mobi­lize the public’s pow­er and capac­i­ty to force action.