[EL] Technical error in McCutcheon majority opinion?

Fri Apr 18 19:08:16 PDT 2014

See the text of the footnote:

8Even those premises are generous because they assume that the donor contributes to non-multicandidate PACs, which are relatively rare. Multicandidate PACs, by contrast, must have more than 50 contributors. 11 CFR §100.5(e)(3). The more contributors, of course, the more the donor’s share in any eventual contribution to Smith is diluted.

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From: Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>>
Date: Friday, April 18, 2014 at 9:17 PM
To: "law-election at UCI.edu<mailto:law-election at UCI.edu>" <law-election at UCI.edu<mailto:law-election at UCI.edu>>
Subject: [EL] Technical error in McCutcheon majority opinion?

The Chief Justice writes:

It is not clear how many candidates a PAC must support before our dedicated donor can avoid being tagged with the impermissible knowledge that “a substantial portion” of his contribution will go to Smith. But imagine that the donor is one of ten equal donors to a PAC that gives the highest possible contribution to Smith.8 The PAC may give no more than $2,600 per election to Smith. Of that sum, just $260 will be attributable to the donor intent on circumventing the base limits. Thus far he has hardly succeeded in funneling “massive amounts of money” to Smith. Buckley, supra, at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612.[westlaw.com]<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.westlaw.com/Link/Document/FullText?findType%3DY%26serNum%3D1976142308%26pubNum%3D708%26originationContext%3Ddocument%26vr%3D3.0%26rs%3Dcblt1.0%26transitionType%3DDocumentItem%26contextData%3D%2528sc.Keycite%2529&k=06%2F1%2FwqqQY9VYFo4IVhphQ%3D%3D%0A&r=%2FiLgDh%2FyV%2BCnaAO3kAA78oY8zditsxp%2FNg5%2B6k2xi4o%3D%0A&m=VPMSMz30qrLfrE3lA4sX3y6gcX3snaFECTjDUmFUuKU%3D%0A&s=f00f0406a251a12bfcabe606693ba8f92dac123d51954d4de0f2a66fbe48281f>
Wouldn't such PACs be subject to a $5,000 contribution limitation rather than $2,600?

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Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
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