Watchdog Groups Applaud The DISCLOSE Act As An Important Step to Mitigate the Corrosive Influence of Corporations on Our Elections

WASHINGTON, April 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Yesterday, a bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives, led by Charles Schumer and Chris Van Hollen, introduced legislation to mitigate the Supreme Court's disastrous ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which overturned 100 years of precedent by ruling that corporations can spend unlimited funds to influence elections.  

The DISCLOSE Act (Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections), when passed, will help ensure that the candidates who win American elections are those who receive the most votes from citizens rather than those who receive the most money from Big Business.

"Every American has seen this year that corporations cannot be trusted to serve the best interests of the people, with Wall Street ripoffs, preventable worker deaths, bank failures and massive executive salaries," said StopTheChamber.com spokesman and attorney Kevin Zeese.  "Corporate robber barons, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have said that they will spend more than $100 million to elect Congress Members this year who will do their bidding.  This corruption of elections is opposed by the vast majority of Americans. The DISCLOSE Act will start to address this attack on our elections by requiring disclosure of corporate advertising, create stand-by-your ad requirements for CEOs, and bar foreign corporations with domestic subsidiaries, federal contractors and TARP recipients from spending their money on elections. This is a much needed first step toward returning honesty to our democracy.  Our grassroots network will be launching a new campaign in the coming days called Protect Our Elections that will not only bring massive citizen support to pass the DISCLOSE Act, but also to pass a whole host of pending election protection legislation, including anti-caging, anti-purging, provisional ballot counting, anti-deceptive practices, and felon enfranchisement.  Passage of these bills will protect millions of existing voters and allow millions of new voters to participate in our elections."

"After more than a decade of assaults on our elections, we are fighting back with demands for transparency, honesty, and fairness," said Zeese.  "We will no longer allow corporations or partisans to run our elections with secret money or secret software that counts the votes.  These are direct threats to our democracy that we are confronting, once and for all."

SOURCE StopTheChamber.com