October, 5, 2013 The Honorable John G. Roberts, Jr.

Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court of the United States Washington DC, 20543 Dear Chief Justice Roberts: My name is Mackenzie Michel and I am a student at Purdue University. I am writing to urge the Supreme Court to consider the case of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Committee as a matter of concern to middle and working class citizens. When James Madison wrote the document that formed the model for the constitution he based his writings, as Im sure you well know, on a famous philosopher called John Locke. Locke believed in the representation of the people, and the concept of a government being by the people and for the people. McCutcheon v. Federal Election Committee subverts the very goals that Madison and Locke had in mind when drafting the first model for the constitution of the United States of America. It is the goal of this letter to show the Supreme Court why McCutcheon threatens these values. If the court were to pass McCutcheon the biggest issue here would be that people would be allowed to make direct campaign contributions to an unlimited amount of political candidates or parties. In the context of my first paragraph it would seem at first to be a massive benefit to the people to be able to contribute funds to the candidate of their choice, but the caveat here is that it is not the people as a collective who are donating these funds. Only the wealthy, otherwise known as the 1%, donate massive amounts of money to political candidates. This is not because they are the only people who care about the democratic process, but rather, because the other people have been pushed out. The donations of the working and middle class seem inconsequential in scope compared to the wealthier people who are able to donate as much money as they wish to the candidates of their choice. If this were to continue to happen political candidates receiving these funds would clearly be poised to choose which of their supporters they most want to make happy if they were to be elected. The clear choice of this candidate or party would be the people who donated the most money to their campaigns as these are their clear supporters, but this is not how the democratic process should work. A government should not simply listen to the people who have enough money to make themselves be heard but should also take into consideration the people who dont have the assets to donate. If McCutcheon were to be adopted this system would clearly favor the 1% in terms of political representation, their needs would be met, but the majoritys needs will be plainly overlooked.

McCutcheon would also reverse almost 40 years of Supreme Court precedents which upheld the constitutionality of federal contribution limits. I urge the court to consider the precedent set back in 1976 with the case of Buckley v. Valeo which stated that the limits on aggregate giving served a useful purpose and that without this ceiling, a person could contribute massive amounts of money to a particular candidate through the use of unearmarked contributions to political committees likely to contribute to that candidate, or [make] huge contributions to the candidate's political party." This was back in a time when we were arguably much less progressive in our political policies than we are now, and even then the Supreme Court was able to see the unavoidable problems with allowing unlimited campaign contributions. I want to thank the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roberts for taking the time to both read and consider this plea against McCutcheon v. Federal Election Committee. I have no illusions that my letter will be of significant impact in the final decisions of the court but my hope is that in writing this I have sparked some of the court to reconsider the implications of this important decision they are about to make on October, 8, 2013. I feel it would be important that the court asks themselves what the future repercussions might be in making a decision in favor of McCutcheon. Sincerely, Mackenzie Michel