Group Files & “Transparent Elections Initiative”: To End Corporate Political Funding

Intro

Even if you're not greatly interested in constitutional issues, you probably know about the Citizens United case that loosed the flood of corporate “dark money” currently overwhelming our elections, and want to something about it. You probably also believe, as Americans have been told since the Supreme Court ruling in 2010, that only a constitutional amendment – or the Court itself – could reverse it.

It turns out, as a group of “crosspartisan” democracy activists in Montana discovered earlier this year, there’s a surprisingly simple way to bypass the Court majority’s bizarre reasoning that corporations have rights equivalent to people, particularly that of free speech, and therefore have a right to spend money to influence elections that cannot be limited by law. Corporations are not in fact people, despite what Roberts, Alito et al would have you believe, but legal creations conceived under state law, each state’s laws. Citizens United did not change that. And those states have unlimited ability to define or redefine the powers corporations have under the charters each state grants them. Corporations may only perform the actions allowed by the states, which might sound similar to limiting their rights by regulation, but legally is quite different.

Although this tool apparently has not been used to control corporations for almost two centuries, legal experts reviewing the so-called Montana Plan say this authority remains in place in every U.S. state. And among the powers a state may deny to corporations is spending money to influence elections.

As Tom Moore writes in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, “The difference between regulating rights and declining to grant powers is not semantic. It is doctrinal. It is foundational. And this may make The Montana Plan the most promising new strategy to eliminate corporate and dark money in politics since the day Citizens United was decided.”

What Is The Montana Plan?

A group organization formed as the Transparent Elections Initiative has filed a constitutional initiative for the 2026 Montana statewide ballot under that title. The initiative proposes doing a few simple things in an enormously effective way. First, it would revoke all currently granted corporate powers completely, then reinstate them in a carefully crafted package that explicitly omits any ability to spend money on political activities.

Now, obviously the devil is in the details and exactly how the language is crafted will inevitably affect its success. What’s been explained so far, however – for example, precise definitions of “election activity” and “ballot-issue activity” that are among the existing powers being revoked, and then omitted – seems designed to resist challenge and has impressed legal experts.

An important element the initiative relies on is existing Montana law, which provides three crucial building blocks:

• The state may change or repeal any or all of its incorporation codes for any reason, at any time. No corporation has a valid claim to any previously granted powers, or even to any aspect of its current existence.

• Any changes apply universally to all corporations, new and existing. Revisions to the underlying law redefine every corporation, at the same time.

• The law applies equally to all corporations operating in the state, regardless of where they were incorporated, outside Montana or even the country.

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The Situation

An obvious question is, because this is a ballot initiative, how likely is it to pass? According to polling allied organizations have done (e.g. YouGov), it wins in a walk – as much as 74% to 26%.

Wait…aren’t we talking about Montana, a famously deepest-red state, that voted for you-know-who by similar margins? Actually, unbeknownst to most Americans (myself included), Montana has a rich and deep populist tradition that created some of the strictest anti-corruption and prohibitions on corporate election meddling in the country. Until Citizens United torched them, that is, via a later SCOTUS case defended by then-Governor Bullock (a Democrat, if you don’t recall). So, the initiative has solid roots, and resonates with Montanan culture, maybe drawing on that rugged-individualist pioneer ethos.

So, likely to pass – as similar measures would in lots of other red and blue places – but first they have to get it on the ballot. That’s proving harder than you might expect, until you consider the likely opposition. The Attorney General, who probably doesn’t call himself the MAG-AG (long A) but should, has held it up on what the campaign calls flimsy, prima-facie incorrect technicalities, which they are appealing. And appealing for funds to keep going, which is how I found out about it to begin with. (Curse you, ActBlue, except for this one time)

Unfortunately, right after that ActBlue sent me another plea from our senior Senator, and others, to support their anti-CU constitutional amendment. OK, they are well intentioned, all of them honorably well intentioned, but that’s not going to happen in any of our lifetimes (mine, anyway). And as I pointed out to the honorable Senator in some choicely pointed words, why waste time on that, when there’s the Montana Plan?

Legal Outlook

Ultimately, isn’t this subject to legal challenge? Of course, but various reviews have found the concept is inherently resistive and the initiative’s structure is robust. For one thing, it is soundly based on two centuries of Supreme Court rulings on corporate powers. In order for the SCOTUS to overturn it, one commentator said it would have to throw out not just its own precedents, but more importantly, much of the fundamental legal principles that govern corporate operation in the entire country.

Learn More

For more information, visit the initiative’s website:https://transparentelection.org/

And I encourage you to browse the tabs on various topics such as history and the plan’s details. For those with a high tolerance for legal complexity, I recommend the Tom Moore article mentioned above, accessible at: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/08/07/transparent-election-initiative/

Ross Bogen