Corporations Can Spend, But They Can’t Vote

Abraham Lincoln stood at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, and spoke words that seem truer today than ever: “…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” I find myself coming back to that line a lot lately. Not as a history-buff’s comfort blanket, but as a simple measuring stick. And by that measure, something essential in American civic life feels like it’s fading.

Not because Lincoln got it wrong, but because we’re starting to act like it doesn’t apply to us anymore. Somewhere between the endless scroll, the hot-take economy, and the permanent campaign funded by deep pockets, a lot of everyday people are being nudged into the role of spectator. The message is subtle, but constant: politics is too complicated, your voice is too small, your vote is already priced in, and the real decisions are made elsewhere, by big business, PACs and Super PACs, lobbyists, consultants, and the paid “experts” who argue on TV like it’s a sport.

Technology didn’t invent special interests, but it did perfect the delivery system. Algorithms don’t reward citizenship; they reward outrage. They don’t elevate nuance; they elevate certainty. And when every issue is packaged as a crisis and every election is framed as a foregone conclusion, people start to disengage, not because they don’t care, but because they feel powerless. That’s the quiet victory of modern influence: convincing the individual that participation is pointless.

Another Way Power Gets Away: Attacking Confidence in the Vote

And lately there’s an even darker twist to the “your vote doesn’t matter” story. It’s not just apathy anymore. It’s an active campaign, often amplified by special interests and partisan influencers, to make people doubt that voting itself is legitimate. You hear it in the constant drumbeat: voter fraud, illegal voting, rigged machines, fake ballots. If you can convince enough people that the system is crooked, you don’t have to win hearts and minds. You just have to make citizens stop trusting the only tool that actually belongs to them.

Here’s the problem with those claims: when investigators actually look, the evidence for widespread fraud just isn’t there. The Brennan Center for Justice summarizes decades of research this way: voter fraud is very rare and voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent. A Reuters fact check (June 2, 2022) cites election-law scholar Justin Levitt’s finding of 31 credible cases of in-person voter impersonation from 2000 to 2014, out of roughly one billion ballots cast. And a Brookings analysis (Oct. 28, 2024), using the conservative Heritage Foundation’s own database, shows just how tiny the proven-case rate is when you set it next to the massive number of votes cast, including a Pennsylvania example of 39 cases across more than 100 million ballots over decades.

On the big, contested elections people argue about the most, the story is similar. In Georgia, a special grand jury investigating 2020 claims stated there was no “widespread fraud” that could have changed the outcome (reported by CBS News, Feb. 16, 2023). In Arizona, the state attorney general’s office reported no evidence of widespread fraud in Maricopa County’s 2020 results (reported by NBC News, Apr. 6, 2022). None of that means the system is perfect, or that mistakes never happen. It means the safeguards, the paper trails, the audits, the recounts, the courts, and the decentralized way we run elections make large-scale cheating extraordinarily hard to pull off without being caught.

To put “extremely rare” in everyday terms: the CDC notes your odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are less than 1 in a million (CDC Lightning Data, updated Apr. 15, 2024). Most of us still go outside, because we understand rare doesn’t mean “always around the corner.” For another comparison, overall IRS audit rates for individual returns have been reported around 0.2%, roughly 1 in 500 in recent years (CBS News, Apr. 11, 2024). Election fraud, especially the kind that could swing outcomes at scale, is not even in that neighborhood. The bigger risk to democracy isn’t millions of fake voters. It’s millions of real voters deciding the whole thing is pointless.

Most Elections Are Closer Than We Admit

Once you accept that the vote itself is secure, the next point lands even harder: elections are often decided by a sliver of the electorate. If your vote “doesn’t matter,” someone should explain why so many races come down to a sliver of the electorate. In 2022, there were eleven U.S. House races decided by less than 1%. Colorado’s 3rd District, for example, was decided by about 0.17 percentage points (546 votes) out of more than 300,000 cast. And that wasn’t even the modern record: in 2020, Iowa’s 2nd District was decided by six votes out of nearly 400,000.

Even in 2024, the tightrope didn’t disappear. One analysis of congressional margins notes that the narrowest U.S. House race was California’s 13th District, about 0.09 percentage points, a margin of roughly 187 votes. And if you want the big stage: in 2020, the presidential election turned on razor-thin state margins, Georgia at about 0.24% (11,779 votes) and Arizona at about 0.31% (10,457 votes). When outcomes hinge on margins like that, telling yourself “it won’t matter if I sit this one out” isn’t realism, it’s surrender.

Now zoom out from the razor-thin margins and look at the other number we rarely say out loud: the size of the electorate that simply stays home. Using the voting-eligible population measure from the University of Florida’s Election Lab, about 66.6% of eligible Americans voted in 2020, which means roughly one-third (about 80 million) did not. In 2022’s midterm, turnout was about 46% of eligible voters, which means more than half of eligible Americans did not vote. And the Census Bureau’s survey estimates for 2024 put turnout at 65.3% of the citizen voting-age population, meaning roughly 34.7% did not. When tens of millions sit out, “big money” doesn’t have to persuade everybody. It just has to dominate the smaller pool that shows up.

Put it in plain numbers: in a midterm like 2022, we’re talking about on the order of 100 million eligible Americans not voting, and even in a big year like 2024 it’s still roughly 80 million people sitting out, which is more than enough to flip the outcome in any “close election” you’ve ever heard about.

How We Drifted from Citizens to Organizations

This didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen by accident. Over decades, our system has steadily shifted influence from the individual citizen toward organized power, entities that can hire specialists, build networks, and flood the zone with money and messaging. Modern campaign finance law is a big part of that story.

In 2002, Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (the “McCain–Feingold” law), aiming to curb “soft money” and regulate certain broadcast political ads close to elections, what the law defined as “electioneering communications.” Whatever you think of that approach, the goal was clear: reduce the ways large pools of money could route around the basic idea that elections should be driven by voters, not bankrolls.

Then came the court decisions that accelerated the drift. In Citizens United v. FEC (2010), the Supreme Court held that the government can’t ban corporations and unions from using general treasury funds for certain independent political spending (spending not coordinated with a candidate). In plain terms, it opened the door wider for outside money to dominate the airwaves, especially through the rise of Super PACs and other vehicles that can raise and spend massive sums.

In McCutcheon v. FEC (2014), the Court struck down aggregate limits on how much an individual could contribute, in total, across all federal candidates, parties, and committees over a two-year cycle, allowing a donor to give the legal maximum to an unlimited number of recipients. Add in the relentless innovation of fundraising, targeting, and influence operations, and you get what we live with now: politics that can feel like a marketplace where access and attention go to the highest bidder.

The Problem with “Big Money” Isn’t Just Spending. It’s What It Does to Everyday Citizens.

When the group or individual with the deepest pockets can keep an issue alive, bury another one, fund a primary challenge, bankroll ads, and hire armies of influence, from lobbyists to lawyers to media personalities, it starts to look like money is making the policy decisions. Maybe not always in the blunt, movie-script way. But in the more realistic way: money decides what gets airtime, what gets framed as “serious,” what gets studied, what gets stalled, and what gets shoved through while everyone is distracted.

But here’s the part we can’t forget: the ultimate power is still with the individual voter. Corporations can spend money, but they can’t vote. A billionaire can write a check with more zeros than most of us will see in a lifetime, but they still only get one vote. And every time one of us stays home, shrugs, tunes out, or decides “both sides are the same,” we don’t punish the powerful. We gift them a larger share of the outcome.

That’s the real choice in front of us. You either choose your leaders, or, by inaction, you let someone you don’t support gain power. If you want government “of the people,” then being “the people” can’t be a once-every-four-years hobby. It can look pretty ordinary: showing up, asking better questions, learning how your county, your school board, your statehouse, and your congressional district actually work. It’s being vocal when you see manipulation dressed up as news. It’s supporting candidates you respect, even if they don’t have a Super PAC hovering overhead. And yes, it’s voting, every time.

Lincoln’s promise wasn’t automatic. “A new birth of freedom” is not something we inherit like a family heirloom. It’s something we keep choosing. If we want a national identity that truly represents “we the people,” then we have to act like it, together, but also individually, right where each of us stands. The money will keep talking. Let it. Then answer with the one thing it cannot buy: your vote.

Until next week, take care of yourself and the people around you. Stay curious, stay kind, and please show up when it counts. I’ll see you soon.