The group plans on setting up an independent expenditure arm sometime early next year to financially back the candidates through initiatives including television ads, direct mailers and polling.
While End Citizens United also hopes to help enact campaign finance reforms on the local and state level, its main objective of passing a constitutional amendment to overturn the 2010 Supreme Court decision is being met with some skepticism by campaign finance experts. A constitutional amendment, after all, must win consent from two-thirds of the Senate and the House, in addition to being ratified by three-fourths of states.
“It’s a really high bar to for a constitutional amendment,” said John Wonderlich, policy director at the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan group that advocates for government transparency. “It’s an uphill battle for people who choose that path.”
That’s putting it mildly. America hasn’t passed a single Constitutional amendment since 1992. And Washington has gotten exponentially more partisan since.
Rick Hasen, a campaign finance regulation expert and professor of law and political science at UC-Irvine School of Law, put it in more stark terms. “Let’s say the group raised $100 million — the chances that even that amount of money to get a constitutional amendment passed by electing some sympathetic members of Congress is a pipe dream.” He said a greater likelihood of getting the law changed is confirming a new Supreme Court justice — when the time comes — who could shift the balance of the court.
But, Hasen argued, groups like End Citizens United do serve a purpose in “continuing with the public awareness of the Supreme Court’s decision and it keeps political pressure on both the Supreme Court and other political actors to not make things worse.”