Constitutional amendment allowing limits on corporate and PAC election spending
Campaign finance
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Amending the Constitution is a governmental act that shareholders cannot vote into being. The corporate half of the problem is still reachable through ownership: companies can stop election spending voluntarily, and investors regularly press them to. In the 2022 proxy season, 19 shareholder resolutions on political spending were filed and 16 came to votes averaging 34 percent support, with two majorities, showing an active corporate-conduct path that shrinks the money the amendment targets. Investor demand for restraint is organized; Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility members have filed roughly 600 proposals since 2011 seeking fuller disclosure of corporate lobbying and political spending. Owners also hold a second lever on the amendment itself: they can direct their companies not to lobby or spend against it, so the corporate money that would otherwise fight the reform stands down by instruction of the people who own those companies. The deeper barrier is structural: Article V requires two thirds of both houses of Congress and three quarters of the states, a threshold that has allowed only 27 of the roughly 11,800 amendments ever proposed into the Constitution.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- The National Common Ground, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, 2026 (surveys February-March 2026)
- Shareholder Resolutions in Review: Political Spending, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (ISS Corporate Solutions), 2022-07-09
- Investors File 60 Proposals Calling for Transparency Around Corporate Political Activity, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2025-04-01
- A Constitution "hard, but not that hard" to change, National Constitution Center, accessed 2026-08-28
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinated 60 shareholder proposals for the 2025 proxy season on lobbying and political election spending disclosure, and reports that its members have filed roughly 600 lobbying disclosure proposals since 2011.
Coordinates shareholder proposals asking companies to disclose and oversee political spending, with 13 proposals voted in 2025 and five winning majority support.
3 campaigns on record
The proposal asked Elevance's board to commission an independent study on adopting a policy against corporate contributions to partisan 527 political organizations, after the company gave more than $9.7 million to the Republican Governors Association and $1.3 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association since 2010.
Result: Received about 8.7% support at the May 2026 annual meeting.
we found no documented change; Trillium described this first-year result as a basis for continued engagement.
Q2 2026 Shareholder Advocacy Impact Report, Trillium Asset Management
Sixty proposals asking for expanded disclosure and board oversight of lobbying (32), political election spending (23) and the consistency of climate lobbying with stated goals (5).
With United Church Funds, Zevin Asset Management, Trillium Asset Management
Result: not stated in source
AbbVie expanded its disclosure and withdrew from four trade associations after engagement.
Adopt a policy of semiannual disclosure of monetary and non-monetary political contributions and expenditures made on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office, with board oversight.
Result: Five majority votes: Meritage 57.7 percent, Cboe 55.8 percent, Crown Holdings 52.7 percent, Spirit AeroSystems 51.4 percent, Teradyne 51.0 percent; average support across 13 votes 41.6 percent
Seven additional proposals were withdrawn after companies reached agreements with the filers.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.