Build your own amendment.
This isn't ours to dictate — and all the language here is merely for fun! Below are some possible provisions a campaign-finance amendment could contain, each with the case for and against. Choose what you think belongs. Watch your amendment take shape in real time.
Baseline assumptions:What more would you add?
Corporations and unions can currently spend unlimited money on elections — Citizens United (2010) opened that door. Turning this on closes it directly in the constitutional text, immune to a future Court reopening it, and (if you also cap contributions below) closes the Super PAC loophole too. Leave it off, spending from these groups stays exactly as unlimited as it is today.
Federal law already bars foreign nationals and governments from spending in U.S. elections. This just moves that ban into the Constitution itself, so a future Congress can't quietly repeal or narrow it by ordinary statute. Leave it off, today's statutory ban — and its existing gaps — stays exactly as is.
Today's contribution limits are ordinary statute — eroded by inflation and repeatedly narrowed in court. This writes a real dollar cap directly into the Constitution, tied to inflation automatically so it can't quietly rot. Leave it off, today's statutory limits remain, with all their existing vulnerabilities.
Right now a candidate can spend unlimited personal wealth on their own campaign — Buckley v. Valeo protects that. This folds a candidate's own money into the same cap as everyone else's. The tradeoff: it stops a wealthy candidate from simply outspending the field, but also removes one of the few ways a well-funded outsider can challenge an entrenched incumbent without relying on donors at all.
Dark money keeps hitting new records even where disclosure laws already exist. This requires anyone spending above a threshold to name their true source within 48 hours — while the race is still happening, not after it's over.
Many big spenders are technically "social welfare" nonprofits that never have to name their own donors, no matter how many shell entities the money passes through. This forces every link in the chain to name its real funders. The honest tension: courts have protected some advocacy groups' membership lists from forced disclosure, so this only reaches spending above a real dollar threshold.
Even with everything else above turned on, a wealthy person can still spend unlimited money independently — theoretically not coordinated with any candidate. That's arguably the single largest channel for big money in elections today. This is the most legally aggressive option here: it moves the line the Supreme Court drew in 1976 between contributions and expenditures. Leave it off, unlimited individual independent spending continues exactly as it does today.
Every option above shrinks where campaign money can come from. This is the only one about supply, not restriction — it requires Congress to build and adequately fund a real public financing option (without dictating its design) so campaigns can still reach the masses and candidates can still compete. It doesn't strictly need to be in a constitutional amendment at all — the Supreme Court already allows this by ordinary statute — so what this really adds is a guarantee a future Congress can't quietly starve it.
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
And what about lobbying — and the revolving door?
Both are the natural next questions, and we deliberately left both out — but that's not the same as saying they don't matter. Lobbying is money spent to influence an official who already holds office. The revolving door is officials cashing in with the industries they regulated once they leave. This amendment is about money spent to elect someone. That's a genuinely different single subject, and folding either one in here risks a germaneness challenge that could put the whole amendment at risk.
Here's the thing, though: Congress can tighten lobbying, gift, and revolving-door rules by ordinary statute right now — no constitutional amendment required, no Buckley, no Citizens United standing in the way. The reason it hasn't happened isn't a legal wall. It's that the Congress being asked to pass these restrictions is the same Congress dependent on the money this amendment restricts.
Once a robust campaign finance reform amendment is ratified, that changes. A Congress no longer structurally dependent on unlimited corporate spending, foreign money, dark money, and unlimited independent expenditure is a Congress with a real shot at finally passing the lobbying and revolving-door reforms it has quietly avoided for fifty years. We're not asking this convention to write those laws, we're building the Congress that finally will.