The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision adversely impacted our nation significantly.

Many worthy causes and actual, individual citizens have become marginalized in the campaign process because they often can’t raise massive amounts of money.

In the 2012 federal election cycle, Super PACs received over $100 million from corporations. As Justice Stevens pointed out in his dissent, corporations are not people; they are not actually members of society. They do not have a right to vote or to run for office and they cannot be given unlimited power to influence elections.

Sadly, much of the accountability-free, third party money has corrupted much of Congress and made many unprepared incumbents servants to it.

Worse yet, this arrangement made a block of representatives perfectly secure in their funding as long as they side with their PACs no matter who gets hurt.

We as citizens must take action to legally change the law of the land to safeguard from this corruption. So I believe the constitutional amendment option is our best chance to succeed.

Yes, the road is long at times but supporting HJM 4001 is an important step to restoring the integrity of our democracy.

As the old saying goes, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

Joshua Keeler

Bremerton