To the editor:

As someone who believes strongly in civic participation, the idea that a corporation — which the Supreme Court has called an “artificial entity,” and that is made up of individual shareholders and employees with different political beliefs — could be allowed to spend directly from its massive corporate treasury on ads for or against a candidate is truly frightening.

A corporation is not, nor has it ever been, a person with voting rights. Corporations are not our neighbors. They cannot get married. They cannot die, and a corporation has never been a constituent member of “We the People.”

However, a decision in favor of the plaintiff in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission — the controversial case that was reheard in Washington on Sept. 9 — would allow corporations to use their immense wealth to loudly promote or attack candidates through unlimited expenditures on ads.

Barack Obama sailed into Washington on a wave of change, buoyed by small donations he received from millions of American citizens. To suddenly decide that those voices should be drowned out by the massive accumulated money of a single “corporate person” runs counter to the very ideals of a representative democracy.