Abstract
Supreme Court decisions in Citizens United v. F.E.C. (2010) and McCutcheon v. F.E.C. (2014), and legislation passed by Congress in 2014 each drastically increased the amount of money in politics. Vermont can take action now to restrain the corrupting effects of money in elections without running afoul of Citizens United. With a result joined by all nine justices, in Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan, the Supreme Court distinguished from the First Amendment reasoning in Citizens United and approved legislative recusal as a method to prevent corruption. Recusal rules straightforwardly address the heart of the problem of corruption of democracy while entirely avoiding entanglement in the convoluted and mostly improvised First Amendment reasoning in the line of cases beginning with Buckley v. Valeo and continuing with Citizens United. Although outrage over Citizens United was initially directed toward advocacy of a constitutional amendment to permit restoration of election spending restrictions, the Supreme Court decision in Nevada Commission on Ethics means that updating our recusal rules provides a far easier and faster way for Vermont to begin to stamp out the corrupting influence of money on elections. A model updated recusal rule is presented.
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