Reuters reports:

More than 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court reshaped American politics with its Citizens United campaign finance ruling, Montana voters will decide this November whether to make their state the first in the nation to bar corporations from spending money on ​elections through a ballot initiative.

It’s a test case for a novel legal strategy that sidesteps the 2010 ruling rather than challenging it head-on — and taps into growing, bipartisan anger over the pervasiveness of so-called dark money in elections.

“Americans ‌are losing the belief that they have any influence over our politics,” said Tom Moore, a lawyer with the Center for American Progress left-leaning think tank in Washington and the legal architect of the movement.

With similar, coordinated efforts underway in over 30 states, Montana could help set a critical precedent, experts say, and potentially lead to another showdown at the Supreme Court. Hawaii’s legislature passed a similar law earlier this year, inspired by those behind the effort here.

That the measure made the ballot in Montana, a deeply conservative state that President Donald Trump won by nearly 20 points in 2024, may seem surprising at ​first. But in a place where robber barons once ran wild, people remain deeply suspicious of money in politics, according to interviews with voters, historians and political scientists.

It’s a sentiment widely shared across the United States. A Brennan Center ​for Justice survey this year found 79% of Americans across parties would support a constitutional amendment to restore limits on political spending. [Continue reading…]