4 FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N v. TED CRUZ FOR SENATE Syllabus repay a candidate’s personal loans. But given that these contributions are already capped at $2,900 per election in order to prevent corruption or its appearance, the approach of adding an additional layer of regulation is a significant indicator that the regulation may not be necessary for the interest it seeks to protect. See id, at 221. Because the Government is defending a restriction on speech, it must do more than “simply posit the existence of the disease sought to be cured”; it must instead point to “record evidence or legislative findings” demonstrating the need to address a special problem. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v. Federal Election Comm’n, 518 U. S. 604, 618. “[M]ere conjecture” is “[in]adequate to carry a First Amendment burden.” McCutcheon, 572 U. S., at 210. Yet the Government is unable to identify a single case of quid pro quo corruption in this context, even though most States do not impose a limit on the use of post-election contributions to repay candidate loans. Pp. 13–16. (ii) In the absence of direct evidence, the Government turns to a scholarly article, a poll, and statements by Members of Congress to show that the contributions used to repay candidate loans carry a heightened risk of at least the appearance of corruption. All of this evidence, however, concerns the sort of “corruption,” loosely conceived, that this Court has repeatedly explained is not legitimately regulated under the First Amendment. Nor is it equivalent to “legislative findings” that demonstrate the need to address a special problem. Pp. 16– 19. (iii) As a fallback argument, the Government analogizes postelection contributions used to repay a candidate’s loans to gifts because they enrich the candidate as opposed to the campaign’s treasury. But this analogy is meaningful only if the baseline is that the campaign will default. The record suggests, however, that winning candidates are commonly repaid in full. For these candidates, post-election contributions bear little resemblance to a gift; they instead restore the candidate to the status quo ante. As for losing candidates, the Government does not provide any anticorruption rationale to explain why contributions to those candidates should be restricted. Finally, the Government argues for deference to Congress’s “legislative judgment” that Section 304 furthers an anticorruption goal. Given scant evidence of corruption, deference to Congress would be especially inappropriate where, as here, the legislative act may have been an effort to “insulate[ ] legislators from effective electoral challenge.” Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U. S. 377, 404 (BREYER, J., concurring). In the end, it remains the role of this Court to decide whether a particular legislative choice is constitutional. Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U. S. 115, 129. Pp. 19–22. 542 F. Supp. 3d 1, affirmed.