A local high school class was asked recently to comment on this January’s Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case. By this ruling the court granted a broad “free speech” right to corporations that amounts to a status similar to that of individual citizens. So similar in fact a dissenting judge mockingly asked his colleagues in the majority, (I paraphrase) does this mean that corporations having First Amendment free speech rights as individual citizens might also expect the right to vote? His sarcasm was not entirely without basis. The implications of this ruling beg the question. Voting is, after all, a form of speech.

The ruling has been very controversial because it has opened a floodgate of corporate money into election campaigns, a much greater flood than what existed before the ruling. With this decision corporations and unions can pour as much money as they deem fit into campaign advertising. Individuals and corporations are limited in the amount they can directly contribute to a particular candidate’s campaign. But when it comes to spending vast sums to advertise on behalf of a particular candidate, these “free speech” rights allow them to do so. Prior to this ruling, a corporation could contribute to political action committees, or to particular groups that were limited in what they could say and do in the 60 days prior to an election. But if you thought money had too much influence in elections before this, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Apparently a large percentage of the students presented with this had either not heard of it before, or knew very little about it. That is not surprising, but they should, because this was a watershed moment in American electoral politics. I commend the teacher who raised the issue with the class. This decision overturned a century of Supreme Court precedents limiting corporate participation in elections, in a court that is traditionally very resistant to throwing out previous courts’ rulings, as a matter of principle. It is apparent that the current court does not feel bound by such tradition or principle, at least when it comes to the power of corporations.

An interesting experiment might be to conduct a mock election in which certain students were given, say, through a lottery, vastly more resources to advertise their support for a slate of candidates. Would we see, as has been the case in real elections, that the amount of resources put toward advertising and media often decides the winner?

And in case there are doubts that allowing corporations to exercise this power is dangerous, consider the fact that a number of large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Bros. Holding Co., GE Capital, with several more, have recently been named by the Justice Department as co-conspirators that colluded to pay below-market interest rates on investments they held for state and municipal governments, cities and school districts. The alleged fraud delivered profits to Wall Street taken out of the proceeds due to taxpayers. If their compulsion toward government is such as this, should we really grant them even greater influence in our elections than what they already enjoy?

Steve Demetriou lives in Windham.