Campaign Financing Reform

Each year billions of dollars are spent on getting candidates of various offices of government elected. Many candidates have had tremendous success through the efforts of much needed monetary contributions to their campaign. Contributors range from unions, religious leaders, organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), the National Rifle Association (NRA), and senior citizens groups. When these groups, known as special interest groups, donate to candidate’s campaign, they expect the candidate to respond to their issues. Because special interest groups, as well as private citizens donate more and more money to campaigns, there is some concern that there is a great need for campaign finance reform.

elections all the way to choosing the next president of the united states. In recent years however there has been an upsurge of people making an independent political action committees called super PAC. Super PACs are unique due to them being allowed to spend an unlimited amount of funds in support which ever candidate they choose. there are however some strings attach to super PACs such as them not being allowed to give money they have collected directly to the candidate or coordinating with the candidate's own political action committee. Super PACs have created a issue on whether it is fair to the opponents of whoever is running against them if they do not have a super PAC, because they can not match the amount of spending a person has spent on political ads or other forms to help get votes when compared to people who have a super PAC helping them.

In 1974, FECA–the Federal Election Campaign Act–a campaign finance law, was amended to place legal limits on campaign elections to a maximum of $1,000 per individual and $5,000 per PAC–political action committee–for each primary, election and runoff. However, FECA neglected to take into account the effects of inflation. Since 1974, inflation has caused $1,000 today to equate to only $240 in 1974, less than a fourth of the originally intended amount. Due to this, candidates need to raise four times the amount of money that they did 41 years ago when the act was amended. Consequently, candidates must focus more on fundraising and have less time to meet citizens and tend to their official

Despite its popularity, there is no serious evidence that campaign finance regulation has actually accomplished any of the goals set out for it by its supporters. Efforts to regulate campaign finance have been little short of disastrous. They have distorted the political process, hindered grassroots political involvement, infringed on First Amendment rights, and helped to entrench incumbents in office while doing nothing to address the allegedly corrupting influence of money in politics.

Campaign Finance reform has been a topic of interest throughout the history of the United States Government, especially in the more recent decades. There are arguments on both sides of the issue. Proponents of campaign finance limits argue that wealthy donors and corporations hold too much power in elections and as a result they can corrupt campaigns. Those who favor less regulation argue that campaign donations are a form of free speech. One case in particular, Citizens United vs. The Federal Election Commission has altered everything with pertaining to Campaign Finance.

Regulating soft money has been difficult because of constitutional issues that protect First Amendment rights, and Congress’ rights over regulating political parties must be focused on preventing fraud or corruption (Mason, 1997). Soft money is used to mobilize campaigns by using the money to support voter registration drives, and other similar activities designed to jump start a candidates’ campaign (Brennan Center, 2000). For this reason, soft money is important to an election campaign, and recently the amount of soft money raised for campaigns has skyrocketed. It has become a concern because it is largely unregulated and can be used to gain an unfair

While there is a limit to the amount an individual, group, or corporation can give directly to a political candidate, there is no limit to the amount of money one can give to a super PAC. These super PACs work closely with a candidate’s campaign and pay for many of the candidate’s expenses. Super PACs spend a lot of money on expensive television advertisements to endorse their candidate and degrade their candidate’s opponents. While candidates often have to disclose their direct campaign contributions, super PACS do not. Super PACs are able to keep the sources of most of their funds hidden from the public. Some Senators and Representatives have been working on passing legislation to remove the cap on individuals’ direct campaign contributions. This would allow candidates to campaign without super PACs, making the sources of campaign funding more clear (Price

The current network of campaign finance is a complicated web involving individual contributors, soft money and hard money, and political action committee influence. In the aftermath of the crooked Watergate scandal, anxiety over campaign finance led to the passage of two major reform bills—the Revenue Act of 1971 and the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974—that have set the guidelines and regulations for campaign finance. Although many other laws and acts have been passed in effort to regulate campaign finance, these two acts set the main standards for campaign finance regulation. The main ideas of the acts stipulate that candidates for the two houses of Congress receive no public funding, candidates in the presidential primaries receive matching dollars, and candidates

During local, state, or federal election there is a limited amount of time and information that a voter has to help him/her decide for which candidate he or she wants to vote. Before the ruling in Citizens United v FEC, private donations from voters were needed to provide candidates with financial means to create commercials, billboards, etc. In turn, this gave the voters a voice in who is to lead their government. Corporations were limited in the amount they could provide to their candidate of choice. After the ruling, corporations can now match every private donation and contribute an unlimited amount on top of that in order to support their candidate. This creates a problem because a corporation can potentially suffocate voters with campaign ads without the other candidates' ads being heard. Therefore creating an uneven debate and platform for Democracy to work.

In a court case in 2010, Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission, the ability to spend virtually limitless money on an election was given under first amendment protection. With this ruling, Political Action Committees, or super PACs, have become tremendously influential when it comes to elections. Unlike regular PACs, these super PACs cannot directly donate any raised money directly to this political candidate. While these parties can not directly donate this raised money, and must be independent of the candidate they support or oppose, there is a huge debate of the unclear line involved with who can be a part of these super PACs. For example, Obama had his Republican challenger and former aides of his office supporting his super PAC.

Campaign finance regulation refers to attempts to regulate the ways in which political campaigns are funded. This includes all spending done to promote or support the promotion of candidates, ballot measures, political parties and more. Regulations can be applied to natural persons, corporations, political action committees, political parties and other organizations. They can come in the form of incentives, such as providing public financing to candidates who abide by spending limits, as well as restrictions, such as contribution limits on donors. Legislative efforts, judicial rulings and citizen initiatives have all played roles in shaping the regulation of political contributions.

Proliferated in 2010, Super PACs have played an immensely influential role in the outcomes of elections and collective action. Super PACs are a new kind of committee that operates politically. As reported by opensecrets.org, Super PACs acquire any amount of donated money in a phenomenon that aggregates towards a fund “to advocate for or against political candidates and must report their donors to the Federal Election Commission on a monthly or quarterly basis”. They are not allowed to give the money to the political candidates, campaigns, or parties explicitly. However, Super PACs can contribute to the outcome of an election by paying for ads that are in support of the candidate that they want to take office, or spend

One is able to discern the argument of both liberals and conservatives. I believe that the issue is far beyond party biases and it is one that needs to be eradicated by the courts. A better system is to be put in placed that gives equal opportunity for political candidates to compete for election and remove the importance of money in the electoral campaigns. Clean elections like that practiced in states like Maine, should be considered at the federal level where the government can level the playing field for all parties and candidates by providing equal funds. Furthermore, one may even go as far as suggesting the implementation of a federal campaign financing system that collects all donations made by contributors and distribute such evenly; this way the government is no longer concern with corruption but rather with political equality and

To combat too much political influence from advertising, the federal government passed a law called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) or as it’s more commonly known, the McCain-Feingold Act. The BCRA sought to expand disclosure on soft money and changed some limits on hard money. The key piece of this legislation is the electioneering communications statute, or section 203. This piece of BCRA was intended to limit the influence of PACs by restricting their ability to air advertisements right before elections. McCain-Feingold prevented corporations and PACs from showing political commercials sixty days before an election and thirty days before a primary (FEC BCRA 90).

After the Citizen United vs. the FEC Supreme Court ruling, in favor of Citizens United, political campaigns have the ability to raise much greater funds through organizations called super PACs. According to Michael Beckel a political reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, “Officially known as “independent expenditure-only committees”— and unofficially dubbed “super PACs”—these political action committees are able to raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations, unions, and other organizations” (Beckel 655). On top of the ability to raise unlimited funds, the individuals donating are not required to disclose their names. This could lead to some serious corruption. Super PACs can run as much advertisement either for or against a political candidate, seriously swaying the way citizen’s vote and view a candidate. In fact “super PACs are allowed to use 100 percent of the funds they raise to influence elections” (Beckel 656). No one expected this Supreme Court ruling to have an impact so fast. As stated in an article published by The Nation, “The total number of TV ads for House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates in 2010 was 2,870,000. This was a 250 percent increase over the number of TV ads