by Gordon Mott

Oct. 23, 2026

One man, One vote

I’m pissed. Everyone should be pissed. For more than 15 years, since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case in 2010, money — big money, dark money, unlimited money of all kinds — has been flooding the electoral process in the United States. Without diving too deep into legalese, the Court’s bottom line was that money is speech, and a protected right for individuals and corporations.

Believe it or not, there are still annual limits on what any person or any company or business or organization can donate to individual politicians. That limit is $3500, for each primary and general election cycle, i.e., $7000 a year. The recipient must be a candidate. In addition, contributions can be made of $44,000 to a national party committee and $10,000 to state, district or local party committees. Sounds relatively reasonable, doesn’t it? While out of the reach of most private citizens in America struggling to pay rent, buy groceries and fill their cars with gas, the limits don’t automatically create an exclusive class of super-wealthy campaign contributors, even though it’s a lot of money for an average American.

If only the reality reflected the law. In this mid-term election cycle through the end of September, between candidates ($1.8 billion) and Super PACsof ($2 billion), nearly $4 billion has been spent on re-election campaigns. Some estimates push the total by Nov. 3 to over $10 billion. We may have become inurred to the reality because of the flood (at least in my case) of the daily emails from candidates and Super PACS (from both sides) begging for more money.

It’s not the way it should be, and it’s not right

I’ll give only two examples.

1. Elon Musk. As of this week, Musk has contributed approximately $440 million to Republican Super PACs, according to Federal Election Commission statistics. You read that correctly. $440 million. That may be a conservative number because Super-Pacs do not have to publish their donor list and their donor’s contributions, and Musk may have given more legal contributions to candidates and party organizations.

How is that possible? Super PACs have been exempted from the campaign contribution limits that remain on the books, the ones I detailed above. Why? The courts have ruled that Super PACs do not directly coordinating with political candidates; therefore, they are not constrained by the contribution limits. As many commentators have observed, the assumption they are not coordinating with candidates is a fiction, a lie that obscures how candidates are financing their campaigns..

2. In Texas, the GOP Senate Leadership Fund and its Texas satellite, the Texas PAC spent $22 million in September to air an ad touting Senate candidate Ken Paxton’s performance as Texas Attorney General 15,000 times. In total, the Texas PAC, formed this past summer, has given over $54 million to Paxton’s campaign; that’s the official Federal Election Commission data. Guess how much Paxton’s own election campaign fund had raised from Jan. 2025 to June 30th 2026, as reported to the Federal Election Commission: $16.8 million of which he only had $6.9 million remaining in cash. The point should be obvious. Texans are being influenced by outside money that doesn’t care about the future of Texas, just the reliable vote of a Senator from that state. His local support from individuals is feeble.

Get it yet? The bottom line is there are no campaign donation restrictions. Individuals with money don’t even have to bother with personal donations to a candidate. Just give it to a PAC, knowing that money will end up in the right place. If you believe these Super PACs (and let’s be clear, both the Democrats and the Republicans have partisan Super PACs) are not coordinating with specific campaigns, you should wake up. The idea that coordination isn’t taking place is complete fiction.

I’m not naive. Money has always played an exaggerated role in American politics. I remember sitting with a Senate candidate in the mid-1990s, and he said, “I have to raise, on average, $11,000 a day to finance my next campaign.” He still had four years left in his term. Every day when he was in his home district, he was meeting with constituents, often screened for their ability to give money. Rest assured, when he was in Washington, parts of every day were dedicated to dialing for dollars.

Neither the historical role of money in politics nor the current situation is right. It is an inherently corrupt landscape when wealthy people try to influence those in power, and those in power need that money to stay in power. Quid pro quo isn’t just a vague concept; it is the nature of the political game.

Here’s my take: if money equals speech and speech equals influence, logic suggests that people with more money have more influence, completely subverting the notion of one man, one vote. My vote means less because it is backed by a pittance, compared to, say, Elon Musk, whose vote for a candidate is multiplied by the millions of dollars in donations he directs to people he believes will support his goals. One man. Millions of dollars. It diminishes the influence of the single voter.

The tragedy is that money is undermining the very foundations of American Democracy. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said as much just this week.

There is a short list of resolutions to the problem: federal funding of elections, strict donation limits to campaigns, a reversal of Citizens United. Any of those solutions would help us turn back the clock to a time when money wasn’t the biggest factor in how campaigns are conducted.

In the meantime, one man, one vote should be the battle cry of every angry, disenfranchised American voter.