Perspectives S36/Ep60: How Dark Money is Influencing American Elections

Will America be able to keep its experiment in democratic republicanism going or will it slide into oligarchy, or worse? My guest on Perspectives is Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor of Law at Stetson University, Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and member of the board of directors of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. She offers a chilling exposé of how corporations manipulate our political system for profit and offers concrete steps on protecting our democracy in her new book, Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians. We discuss how America’s privately funded campaign finance system, combined with corporate greed and a tilt towards authoritarianism within the Republican Party, have placed American democracy on a knife’s edge. Drawing on key Supreme Court cases, CORPORATOCRACY reveals how major US corporations have worked to undermine practices and laws upholding democratic principles like free and fair elections through shadowy tactics from bankrolling regressive politicians to funding ghost candidates with dark money.