Campaign Finance Essay

From the very first elections held in the United States, there has always been a strong link between money and politics. During the first elections in the late 1700’s you had to be a white male landowner over the age of 21 in order to vote, meaning that you had to have money in order to have your vote counted. It seems today that we cannot go a day with out seeing campaign finance in the media, whether or not it is through advertisements for politicians in the media or asked to donate money to help let your favorite candidate win. Because campaign finance has always been on the back burner of political issues, there has hardly been any change to the large influence money has over the election process and politicians. While money has it’s

The right of free speech granted to all citizens in the first amendment, the necessity of funding expensive political campaigns, and the fact that small donations make a candidate responsive to the needs of their constituents, all make any restrictions on campaign financing unneeded and onerous. Congress should strike down any bills attempting to reform this essential part of the U.S. election process. Any further restrictions on donations to political campaigns will prove detrimental to the United States functioning system of elections by limiting individuals’ freedom of speech, making our candidate’s campaigns underfunded and unresponsive to the needs of the American people.

Of course, such influence establishes a tyranny of the rich that our forefathers clearly wanted to prevent. Senator Russ Feingold, a proponent of campaign finance reform, said, "The current campaign finance system is fueling the transformation of our representative democracy into a corporate democracy creating a political system that allots power in direct relation to the amount of money an individual or interest group can contribute" (Campaign Finance Reform). The horror of such a governmental system has fueled the cries for campaign finance reform.

With the knowledge that political advocacy has drastically increased following deregulation of the campaign finance system, and resulted in a lower turnout, fixing our system is not an easy matter. Many politicians have championed bills such as tester-murphy which unilaterally reverses the Citizens United court case. This bill would allow FEC to regulate money and stripe organizations first amendment protections. However according to outsiders such as Hasen this bill has two key problems. The first issue is in relation to its limitations. Under this bill the press would still be allowed political advocacy protections. With the rise of the internet it also allows for shadow press agencies to be created online and participate in political advocacy. Due to this loophole the funds from current donors would simply shift from a 501c4 to a press outlet. The second issue is this bill would need to become an amendment. With the divided political landscape, it is extremely unlikely a super majority could be formed by either the legislative body or the states to form an amendment (22-28). If Tester-Murphy was simply passed a bill swiftly overturn the

With the introduction of “soft” money in politics, elections no longer go to the best candidate, but simply to the richer one. Soft money is defined as unregulated money that is given to the political parties that ends up being used by candidates in an election. In last year’s elections, the Republican and Democratic parties raised more than one-half of a billion dollars in soft money. Current politicians are pushing the envelope farther than any previous administrations when it comes to finding loopholes in the legal system for campaign fundraising. The legal limit that any one person can contribute to a given candidate or campaign is one thousand dollars. There is, however, no limit on the amount of money one

At the basis of the campaign finance reform movement is the belief that everyone should have an equal say in the government, and that wealthy individuals or special interest groups should not be able to manipulate the system through excessive contributions to unduly influence elections. The more expensive it becomes to finance a

Biersack, R., Herrnson, P., & Wilcox, C. (1993). Seeds for Success: Early Money in Congressional Elections. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 18(4), 535-551. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/439854. Biersack, R., Herrnson, P., and Wilcox, C., are political scientist who have written extensively on the subject of campaign finance. Together, they have also co-authored, A Risky Business? PAC Decisionmaking in Congressional Elections. In this particular article, featured in Legislative Studies Quarterly, a question is posed: is money raised early in the campaign more valuable than money raised late in the campaign? In, Seeds for Success: Early Money in Congressional Elections, Biersack, Herrnson, and Wilcox believe that early money does

Lawmakers have made several attempts to control how much money is allowed into elections during the many different time periods of American history. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act did attempt to limit the amounts of money in

In my view, campaign finance has gone from something that could potentially help give the power of government back to the people to a complete joke. When trying to answer the questions of campaign finance you get a series of hidden meanings, jumbled definitions and no real answer to you questions, which is exactly the way Washington and campaign workers like it. The more bizarre and convoluted the rules are the more money each campaign can make. It seems that only way to find out any real information is to become a member of the inside, controlling the way campaigns really operate and change.

To win a presidential election, it is a necessity to be able to afford the cost of campaigning. The start up cost is $10 million just for the headquarter. These candidates will need to spend another $4 to $15 million to stay in the game. The fight to remain as a candidate is vicious as there will only be a couple of candidates being chosen for the final round. To be in the final round, they have to gain their popularity, advertise about themselves in order to win. The downside to the hefty price of campaigning is that only the wealthy can win. The less wealthy ones are those whom are less funded and are not in the two major political parties in the US. Hence the majority in the US might not be very well represented due to social inequality.

This is counter to the very argument to have public campaign financing, not only increase competition but to engage citizens in the process. This would indicate the system does not promote citizen engagement or influence on policy agendas. Policy priorities continue to benefit mostly a segment of the city population who supported the winning candidate (Trounstine, 2008). Stakeholders, therefore, still have influence over government officials who have the power to deter election rules and reforms. Yet, it might be also the case, that elites are adept at adapting the constraints of institutions and alternative ways to influence the current political environment through other means(Mullin, 2008; Adams,

The American campaign finance system is broken and corrupt. To understand the problem of the current system, it is essential to analyze: The history of campaign finance,

The American campaign finance system is broken and corrupt. To understand the problem of the current system, it is essential to analyze: The history of campaign

     The only way to survive a presidential or congressional election race is with money. All of the 2000 presidential candidates got as far as they did with lots and lots of money. But, since most

A loss by the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 2016 and victory by an outsider to Republican politics who still became its standard bearer becomes less surprising when we focus on the organizational underpinnings of both parties and the role they played in the outcome. That outcome reflects the responding changes in technology and methods of campaigning about national and global economic forces for each of the parties and how these affect the lives of population groups that are crucial to electoral success.