By now, you know that the Citizens United decision means we can’t use campaign finance reform to limit corporate influence in our politics.

You also know that with the current ideological split on the Supreme Court, any attempt to overturn it is all but doomed. That’s why we’re taking a different approach.

Using two centuries of Supreme Court precedent on corporate law (instead of campaign finance law!), we’re going to revoke corporations' political spending powers as non-human entities.

We developed a legal strategy to pass a ballot initiative doing just that, and we’ve named it The Montana Plan. Once we’ve passed this as a ballot initiative here in Montana, it sets a precedent, and we’ll finally have a blueprint we can use in all 49 other states.

Our plan to get undue corporate influence out of our elections and put a permanent end to “dark money” loopholes already has fans across the political spectrum. Former Governor Marc Racicot and I released a joint statement of support:

“With passage of this initiative, a provision would be added to the Montana Constitution prohibiting corporations from having political-spending power. This would mean that, in Montana, Citizens United no longer applies.”

And this isn’t one of those great-in-theory ideas. Our boots are on the ground in Big Sky Country right now. We’re working to qualify for the ballot here, which means talking to Montanans where they’re at, in every corner of the state. Then, we’ll need to get signatures — 100,000 of them, to be exact.

We need your help to keep gas in our cars and buy clipboards for volunteers, so Transparent Election Initiative can reach everyone from Miles City to Missoula.

Please consider making a donation of $17 (our average contribution) to fuel our work today:

Thank you for standing with me in support of Transparent Election Initiative. You’ll hear more from them soon about all things Montana Plan.

Jon Tester
Former U.S. Senator