Carter: Unchecked contributions ‘legal bribery’
OBSERVERS’ FINDINGS
A group from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observed the 2012 U.S. elections at the invitation of the federal government. In an event Wednesday at the Carter Center, it released a report on its findings. Among them:
— The election was administered professionally and the public generally viewed the outcome as legitimate.
— Voter identification rules vary across the states and have become politicized.
— Political spending by outside groups can be exempt from disclosure requirements, raising transparency concerns.
— Rules on vote recounts vary widely and are not always clearly defined, which could result in complaints.
Associated Press
Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday that unchecked political contributions are “legal bribery of candidates” and denounced a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made possible unlimited spending by outside groups, including corporations and labor unions.
“It’s accepted fact,” Carter said during a speech at the Carter Center in Atlanta. “It’s legal bribery of candidates. And that repayment may be in the form of an ambassadorship to someone who has raised three or four hundred thousand dollars to help a candidate get elected.”
Carter spoke at a forum where an observer group from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe released its report on last year’s U.S. election. He said the U.S. Supreme Court made a “very stupid” decision by removing limits on independent campaign spending by businesses and labor unions, which the court found was a constitutionally protected form of political speech.
Carter, a Democrat, recalled that he and his Republican opponents for the White House, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Ronald Reagan in 1980, used public financing to run their general election campaigns.
Carter more generally criticized the amount of private contributions flowing into political campaigns.
“I would say that it’s almost impossible for a candidate, like I was back in those early days or others, even, to be considered seriously as a candidate to represent the Democratic or Republican parties as nominee if you can’t raise $100 million or $200 million from contributors, many of whom know that they are making an investment in how they are going to be treated by the winner after the election is over,” Carter said.
Carter said that while elections in the United States once set an example for the world, the country’s reputation diminished in 2000 when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in a Florida vote recount, effectively deciding the election in favor of Republican George W. Bush. He also criticized GOP-led state legislatures for changing polling hours in ways he said were meant to frustrate likely Democratic voters.
