Read­er: I have a con­fes­sion to make. I am not a lawyer. Nor am I a con­sti­tu­tion­al law schol­ar, a per­son who has stud­ied in great detail the dif­fer­ences in dis­clo­sure require­ments between non­prof­its and for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tions, or a per­son who reads arti­cles with the word ​“finance” in the first para­graph. My chief inter­est with mon­ey lies in whether I have enough of it to sur­vive. In this, I am not unlike many Amer­i­cans, all of whom are affect­ed by the 2010 Supreme Court deci­sion, Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v. FEC. All of us have good rea­son to be invest­ed in the fight to over­turn that deci­sion and ensure that cor­po­rate mon­ey does not con­trol our elec­tion system.

The ramifications of the Citizens United decision are complex. Having the issue boiled down into a slogan may seem helpful, but it doesn't do so much to educate those who haven't already made up their minds.

The Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing is noto­ri­ous. Its imme­di­ate effect was to nul­li­fy key por­tions of the bipar­ti­san cam­paign reform law known as ​“McCain-Fein­gold,” which reg­u­lat­ed spend­ing by out­side spe­cial inter­est groups try­ing to influ­ence elec­tions. The Court held that such spend­ing by cor­po­ra­tions – whether for-prof­it or non­prof­it – con­sti­tutes polit­i­cal ​“speech” that can­not be restrained under the First Amend­ment. So, Con­gress can­not lim­it spend­ing in elec­tions, such as to sup­port or denounce can­di­dates, even though cor­po­ra­tions can­not give mon­ey direct­ly to a can­di­date. As for the long-term impact… well, that’s where we leave sim­plic­i­ty behind.

One exam­ple of pop­u­lar resis­tance to the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing comes from Rep. Ted Deutch (D‑Fla.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.). They have pro­posed the same con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment in their respec­tive hous­es – Deutch’s ​“Out­law­ing Cor­po­rate Cash Under­min­ing the Pub­lic Inter­est in Our Elec­tions and Democ­ra­cy” amend­ment, intro­duced in Novem­ber; and Sanders’ ​“Sav­ing Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy” amend­ment, intro­duced in Decem­ber – both of them brief, iden­ti­cal and decep­tive­ly simple.

Every word of these pro­posed amend­ments is impor­tant. The ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion are so com­plex that an aver­age Amer­i­can vot­er can eas­i­ly become lost try­ing to under­stand what’s at stake. Hav­ing the issue boiled down into a slo­gan may seem help­ful, but it doesn’t do so much to edu­cate those who haven’t already made up their minds. So, let’s start, as any good con­ver­sa­tion should, with why those of us who are unini­ti­at­ed should care.

Shady PACs

You can­not give more than $2,500 direct­ly to a polit­i­cal can­di­date. The cor­po­ra­tion you work for can­not give any mon­ey direct­ly. The rea­son is sim­ple: When some­one gives you mon­ey, you tend to avoid upset­ting them. Politi­cians are implic­it­ly dis­cour­aged from pass­ing laws that neg­a­tive­ly affect pow­er­ful donors, just like you are implic­it­ly dis­cour­aged from yelling at your boss. If cor­po­ra­tions can buy politi­cians, they will.

But Cit­i­zens Unit­ed gave cor­po­ra­tions the pow­er to ​“speak” (spend mon­ey) on behalf of can­di­dates or about ​“issues.” One ram­i­fi­ca­tion is that they can make what are known as ​“issue ads”: With­out using the words ​“vote for,” ​“sup­port,” ​“oppose” or ​“elect,” they can broad­cast an ad telling you that the can­di­date they oppose is pure evil. Appar­ent­ly the assump­tion of the five guys in the major­i­ty on the Court was that cor­po­ra­tions would do this open­ly: Hall­mark, for exam­ple, could air an ad telling you Barack Oba­ma nev­er sends cards on Secretary’s Day, because he is hate­ful. That would be shady. But not near­ly so shady as what has happened.

What has hap­pened is that can­di­dates are nom­i­nal­ly split­ting up from their own advi­sors, so that those advi­sors can start polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees – ​“Super PACs” – which can receive and spend unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey. Romney’s Super PAC, for exam­ple, is run by three for­mer advi­sors of his 2008 cam­paign; Obama’s Super PAC is run by for­mer aide Bill Bur­ton. In oth­er words, through sur­ro­gates, politi­cians have effec­tive­ly found a way to receive and spend unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey. If cor­po­ra­tions – or wealthy indi­vid­u­als, like casi­no mag­nate Shel­don Adel­son, who’s giv­en Newt Gingrich’s Super PAC $10 mil­lion, 4,000 times his $2,500 direct con­tri­bu­tion lim­it – can buy politi­cians, they will.

To define a ​‘per­son’

The Sanders-Deutch amend­ment has four points: First, that ​“the rights pro­tect­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion” are reserved for ​“nat­ur­al per­sons,” and not ​“for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tions.” Sec­ond, that pri­vate busi­ness enti­ties are sub­ject to gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion. Third, that said enti­ties shall be pro­hib­it­ed from mak­ing any con­tri­bu­tion to any polit­i­cal cam­paign. And, fourth, that Con­gress and the states shall have the right ​“to reg­u­late and set lim­its on all elec­tion con­tri­bu­tions and expen­di­tures,” and to autho­rize polit­i­cal com­mit­tees to ​“pub­licly dis­close the sources of those expenditures.”

These points are care­ful­ly cho­sen, but not uni­ver­sal­ly embraced even among oppo­nents of the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing. Strip­ping per­son­hood specif­i­cal­ly from ​“for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tions” leaves non­prof­its – for exam­ple, the right-wing 501(c)(4) non­prof­it known as Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, which helped start this mess – uncov­ered from the first clause of the amend­ment. Giv­en that such orga­ni­za­tions may par­tic­i­pate in lob­by­ing and polit­i­cal activ­i­ty with­out hav­ing to dis­close their donors and that they can effec­tive­ly laun­der unlim­it­ed mon­ey in ways com­pa­ra­ble to Super PACs, they can exer­cise tremen­dous influ­ence with­out ever telling us who is pulling their strings.

But strip­ping non­prof­its of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights could also ren­der good orga­ni­za­tions vul­ner­a­ble. One thing a ​“Cor­po­ra­tions Are Not Peo­ple” plac­ard doesn’t teach you is that the idea of cor­po­ra­tions hav­ing First Amend­ment rights was instru­men­tal in deter­min­ing the right of the NAACP (a non­prof­it cor­po­ra­tion) to pro­tect its mem­ber­ship lists and to bring law­suits on behalf of racial inte­gra­tion. The deci­sion in NAACP v. But­ton reads: ​“The activ­i­ties of peti­tion­er, its affil­i­ates and legal staff shown on this record are modes of expres­sion and asso­ci­a­tion pro­tect­ed by the First and Four­teenth Amend­ments which Vir­ginia may not pro­hib­it. … Although peti­tion­er is a cor­po­ra­tion, it may assert its right and that of its mem­bers and lawyers to asso­ciate.” So that deci­sion rest­ed not just on whether mem­bers of NAACP had con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, but on whether the NAACP itself had them.

Mak­ing the dis­tinc­tion between non­prof­its and for-prof­its serves one oth­er cru­cial group, too: unions. The AFL-CIO actu­al­ly filed a brief in the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v. FEC case, argu­ing for the Court to inval­i­date a rul­ing that upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of restric­tions on ​“elec­tion­eer­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions” because it too runs ads in elec­tion sea­sons, despite sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between cor­po­rate trea­suries and union fund­ing. Which, as sev­er­al left-wing colum­nists have point­ed out, was a real­ly smart deci­sion – pro­vid­ed a union has as much mon­ey to spend on elec­tions as Exxon. (It doesn’t. It didn’t. And nev­er will.)

There­fore, the amend­ment would strip ​“speech” rights from Exxon and oth­er mega-cor­po­ra­tions, but not from unions or non­profts. That dif­fer­ent treat­ment would be con­sis­tent with oth­er judi­cial deci­sions. How­ev­er, leav­ing 501(c)(4) non­prof­its uncov­ered means that cor­po­ra­tions could still influ­ence elec­tions in a very real way through those groups. In a bat­tle of the bank accounts between unions and for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tions, a union win is dis­tinct­ly unlikely.

The good news, advo­cates say, is that the rest of the amend­ment sub­stan­tial­ly clos­es this loop­hole by allow­ing Con­gress to reg­u­late cor­po­rate expen­di­tures and require full dis­clo­sure. The amend­ment may not use the pre­cise lan­guage pre­ferred by every oppo­nent of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, but its approach is remark­ably tough and comprehensive.

Then there’s the fact that it does not just strip for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tions of First Amend­ment rights. It strips them of all con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions accord­ed to ​“nat­ur­al per­sons.” Giv­en that busi­ness­es have long used the Con­sti­tu­tion to shield them­selves against reg­u­la­tion, this is unlike­ly to be an easy fight to win. Cor­po­rate per­son­hood has been invoked to defend the right of 19th-cen­tu­ry rail­roads not to pay cor­po­ra­tion-spe­cif­ic tax­es (the Four­teenth Amend­ment; equal pro­tec­tion under the law), the right of Nike to will­ing­ly lie about work­ing con­di­tions in its fac­to­ries (the First Amend­ment; free­dom of speech), and the right of the Riverdale Mills wire-mesh man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny not to have EPA-col­lect­ed water test results used against it in court (the Fourth Amend­ment; pro­tec­tion against unrea­son­able search and seizure).

Strip­ping all busi­ness­es of nifty get-out-of-con­se­quences-free cards would rouse a tremen­dous amount of ire, backed by a tremen­dous amount of mon­ey. Grant­ed, it would also give con­sumers and the state greater pow­er to pro­tect them­selves against such cor­po­rate malfea­sance. But then, that’s the point; for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tions are not known to be cud­dly, pub­lic-mind­ed enti­ties, espe­cial­ly not when it comes to the mat­ter of being reg­u­lat­ed or sued.

The rest of the amend­ment, on the oth­er hand, focus­es on reject­ing the idea of expen­di­ture as ​“speech,” by any per­son, cor­po­ra­tion of any kind, or union, and plac­ing cam­paign fund­ing and expen­di­ture under con­gres­sion­al and state reg­u­la­tion. Any­one not inter­est­ed in per­son­al­ly buy­ing a con­gress­man could rea­son­ably agree to this provision.

How to win?

The ques­tion of ​“how to win” is, again, decep­tive­ly sim­ple. Obvi­ous­ly, one wins by get­ting 75 per­cent of state leg­is­la­tures to rat­i­fy the amend­ment (with­in the next sev­en years), if an amend­ment were approved by two-thirds of Con­gress, or two-thirds of states demand­ed a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion. Also obvi­ous: This is unlike­ly in the short term.

That said: Look at the title of Deutch’s pro­pos­al, which dif­fers from the Sanders pro­pos­al only in its name: It trans­lates into the very plac­ard-friend­ly OCCU­PIED Amend­ment. Remind­ing the 99% that the rich have more say than we do in deter­min­ing the polit­i­cal agen­da reli­ably, and increas­ing­ly, gets people’s attention.

There’s orga­nized resis­tance to the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing; the con­stel­la­tion group Unit­ed for the Peo­ple lists 70 ​“sup­port­ing orga­ni­za­tions” on its web­site. Not all of them agree on tac­tics, but they’re will­ing to do what it takes to over­turn the rul­ing. Politi­cians who need those non­wealthy vot­ers have good rea­son to pay attention.

“Dozens of mem­bers of Con­gress have stood in sup­port of one of the array of new amend­ments to address spend­ing in elec­tions and help over­turn Cit­i­zens Unit­ed,” says Lisa Graves, of Unit­ed for the Peo­ple. ​“And, the Move to Amend coali­tion, work­ing in con­cert with oth­er groups, orga­nized events in over 150 cities to protest the anniver­sary of the deci­sion. Between the groups in the con­stel­la­tion and the oth­er efforts in Con­gress, well over a mil­lion Amer­i­cans have signed on to over­turn­ing the decision.”

It’s fair to say that this oppo­si­tion is pop­u­lar enough to com­mand the Legislature’s atten­tion. And atten­tion is what we are get­ting: Although Sen. Sanders is far from the first con­gress­man to stand up against Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, he is one of the most delight­ful­ly fiery. Wit­ness Sanders decry­ing the finan­cial involve­ment of the Koch broth­ers in fund­ing con­ser­v­a­tive cam­paign groups:

What do we think? Do we think that Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy is about a cou­ple of wealthy bil­lion­aires putting hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars into cam­paigns with­out dis­clo­sure? Is that real­ly the democ­ra­cy that Amer­i­cans fought and died for in war after war? I think not.

His and Deutch’s amend­ment may not need to pass quick­ly – or at all, in its present incar­na­tion – in order for those of us opposed to Cit­i­zens Unit­ed to win. But ​“win­ning” may sim­ply mean that the next time vot­ers see an attack ad on TV, they might take a moment to won­der: ​“Who wrote that check?”