Francais | English | Espanõl

Campaign finance reform

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Image:Merge-arrow.gif
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Campaign finance. (Discuss)
Political campaign

Part of the Politics series

Key People

Campaign Message

Campaign Finance

Negative Campaigning

Politics Portal · edit

Campaign finance reform is the common term for the political effort in the United States to change the involvement of money in politics, primarily in political campaigns.

Although attempts to regulate campaign finance by legislation date back to 1867, the first successful attempts nationally to regulate and enforce campaign finance originated in the 1970s. The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 required candidates to disclose sources of campaign contributions and campaign expenditure. It was amended in 1974 with the introduction of legal limits on contributions, and a provision created the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002 is the most recent major federal law on campaign finance, which revised some of the legal limits of expenditure set in 1974, and attempted to ban unregulated expenditures made by political parties called "soft money".

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] First attempts

Money has been associated with elections since the inception of the electoral process in the United States. Out of four million citizens during the Revolution, only 800,000 white male property owners were enfranchised. In 1777 James Madison lost a race for the Virginia legislature, which he claimed was due to his refusal to provide alcohol. Aaron Burr persuaded the New York state assembly to create an anti-Federalist state bank for the purpose of helping citizens buy land in order to gain votes.

By the time of the presidential election of 1828, twenty two of the twenty four states chose presidential electors through the popular vote and most had abandoned the property requirement. Some politicians had been known to buy votes and pay repeat voters. In 1823 the price of a vote in New York City was $5 and for repeat voters, went as high as $30.

In order to gain votes from the recently enfranchised, common white man, Andrew Jackson started an early campaign in 1825 with a reelection committee that enabled support from a network of partisan newspapers across the nation. After his election, Jackson began a political patronage system that rewarded political party operatives, which had a profound effect on future elections. Eventually, appointees were expected to contribute portions of their pay back to the political machine. During the Jacksonian era, some of the first attempts were made by corporations to influence politicians. Jackson claimed that his charter battle against the Second Bank of the United States was one of the great struggles between democracy and the money power.

Simeon Cameron in the 1850's through 1870's was responsible for the "Pennsylvania Idea" of applying the wealth of corporations to help maintain Republican control of the legislature to include regularly purchasing votes and other vehicles of power. Political machines across the country used squeeze or strike bills to force corporate interests into paying for the defeat of the measures. U.S. Senators of the time were elected not by popular vote, but by state legislatures, whose votes could sometimes be bought. Exposed bribery occurred in Colorado, Kansas, Montana and West Virginia.

Abraham Lincoln's attempt to finance his own 1858 Senate run bankrupted him, even though he had arranged a number of $500 expense accounts from wealthy donors. However, he was able to regain enough money in his law practice to purchase an Illinois newspaper to support him in the presidential election of 1860, for which he gained the financial support of businessmen in Philadelphia and New York City.

After the Civil War, parties increasingly relied on wealthy individuals who had become rich from the war industry, such as Jay Cooke, the Vanderbilts and the Astors. The first federal campaign finance law, passed in 1867, was a Naval Appropriations Bill which prohibited government employees from soliciting contributions from Navy yard workers. As an aftermath of the aforementioned Jacksonian political patronage, a practice of political assessment required officeholders to return an assessed portion of their pay to the machine in order to secure the future of a position. This provoked passage of the Pendleton Act of 1883, extending the prohibition of political contributions to all civil service workers. However, this increased pressure to acquire funding from corporate and individual wealth.

In the campaign of 1872 a group of wealthy New York Democrats pledged $10,000 each to pay for the costs of promoting the election. One Ulysses S. Grant supporter alone contributed one fourth of the total finances. One historian said that never before was a candidate under such a great obligation to men of wealth. Vote buying and voter coercion were common in this era. After more standardized ballots were introduced, these practices continued, applying methods such as carbon paper under ballots for proof of payment.

Boise Penrose mastered post-Pendleton Act corporate funding through extortionist tactics, such as squeeze bills. During his successful 1896 U.S. Senate campaign he raised a quarter million dollars within 48 hours. He allegedly told supporters that they send him to Congress to enable them to make more money.

The wealthy Ohio industrialist, shipping magnate and political operative, Mark Hanna assessed banks 0.25% of their capital. Corporations were assessed in relation to their stake in the prosperity of the country. He was made chairman of the Republican National Committee after giving $100,000 out-of-pocket toward the 1896 nomination of William McKinley. He managed to make McKinley's run the prototype of the modern commercial advertising campaign, the most expensive up to post-WWI, issuing the President-to-be's image on buttons, billboards, posters, etc. Supporters explicitly recognized that they were paying for the service of managing the politics of their business interests.

Twentieth century Progressive advocates, muckraker journalists and political satirists made it clear to the general public that the policies of vote buying and excessive corporate and moneyed influence were abandoning the interests of millions of taxpayers. They advocated regulating antitrust laws, restricting corporate lobbying and campaign contributions, as well as greater citizen participation and control, including standardized secret ballots, strict voter registration and women's suffrage.

In his first term, President Theodore Roosevelt, following President McKinley's assassination of 1901, began trust-busting and anti corporate influence activities, but fearing defeat, turned to bankers and industrialists for support in what turned out to be his 1904 landslide campaign. Roosevelt was embarrassed by his corporate financing and was unable to clear a suspicion of a quid pro quo exchange with E.H. Harriman for what was an eventually unfulfilled ambassador nomination. There was a resulting national call for reform, but Roosevelt claimed that it was legitimate to accept large contributions if there were no implied obligation. However, in his 1905 message to Congress following the election, he proposed that "contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law." The proposal, however, included no restrictions on campaign contributions from the private individuals who owned and ran corporations. Roosevelt also called for public financing of federal candidates via their political parties. The movement for a national law to require disclosure of campaign expenditures, begun by the (citizen's lobbying group) National Publicity Law Association, was supported by Roosevelt, but delayed by Congress for a decade.

This first effort at wide-ranging reform resulted in the Tillman Act in 1907 which prohibited corporations and nationally chartered (interstate) banks from making direct financial contributions to federal candidates. However, weak enforcement mechanisms made the Act unenforceable. Disclosure requirements and spending limits for House and Senate candidates followed shortly thereafter. The first contribution limits were enacted in the Corrupt Practices Act (1925). An amendment to the Hatch Act of 1939 set an annual ceiling of $3 million for political parties' campaign expenditures and $5,000 for individual campaign contributions. The Smith-Connally Act (1943) and Taft-Hartley Act (1947) extended the corporate ban to labor unions. ***

[edit] FECA and the Watergate amendments

Much of this legislation, however, was full of loopholes and went totally unenforced. Congress passed a comprehensive overhaul of campaign finance regulations in 1971 with the Federal Election Campaign Act (amended 1974) and Revenue Act. The legislation was wide-ranging, attempting to consolidate previous reforms and also enacting a variety of new measures, including the first steps towards public financing of presidential campaigns. Enforcement remained a challenge, though, thanks in part to the lack of a central agency for monitoring compliance.

Public outrage at the Watergate scandal resulted in amendments to FECA which finally resulted in further changes in campaign finance law. New provisions included new, stricter and more comprehensive contribution and expenditure limits for campaigns and other committees, full public financing for presidential general election campaigns, and, for the first time, an independent agency -- the Federal Election Commission -- to enforce campaign finance rules.

The new law was challenged, resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo. The decision upheld contribution limits, disclosure requirements, and voluntary public financing, while striking down most limits on expenditures.

[edit] Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002

John McCain is the politician most recently associated with campaign finance reform
John McCain is the politician most recently associated with campaign finance reform

In 2002, spurred by the 1996 campaign finance scandal which involved illegal donations to the Democratic Party from overseas sources and, later, the collapse of Enron, a major contributor to politicians at all levels of the U.S. system, reformers in the U.S. House of Representatives were able to pass the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), also called the McCain-Feingold bill after its chief sponsors, John McCain and Russ Feingold. The U.S. Senate then gained eight votes more than the requisite 60 to shut off debate and passed the House version of the bill 60-40 on March 20, 2002. It was signed into law by President Bush on March 27, 2002. He said, in part, "I believe that this legislation, although far from perfect, will improve the current financing system for Federal campaigns... Taken as a whole, this bill improves the current system of financing for Federal campaigns, and therefore I have signed it into law." The bill was the first overhaul of campaign finance laws since the post-Watergate scandal era.

The BCRA was a mixed bag for those who wanted to remove the money from politics. It eliminated all soft money donations to the national party committees--but it also doubled the contribution limit of hard money, from $1,000 to $2,000 per election cycle, with a built-in increase for inflation. In addition, the bill aimed to curtail so called "issue ads" by banning the use of corporate or union money to pay for broadcast advertising that identifies a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or nominating convention, or 60 days of a general election. Any ads within those periods that identify a federal candidate must be paid for with regulated, hard money or with contributions exclusively made by individual donors.This was added to the BCRA as the 'Wellstone Amendment', sponsored by Senator Paul Wellstone.

The law was challenged as unconstitutional by groups and individuals including the California State Democratic Party, the National Rifle Association, and Republican Senator Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), the Senate Majority Whip. After moving through lower courts, in September 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case, McConnell v. FEC. On Wednesday, December 10, 2003, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that upheld the key provisions of McCain-Feingold; the vote on the court was 5 to 4. Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the majority opinion; they were joined by David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, and opposed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia.

In another ruling of note, in Washington State, Thurston County Judge Christopher Wickham ruled that media articles and segments were considered in-kind contributions under state law. The heart of the matter focused on the I-912 campaign to repeal a fuel tax, and specifically two broadcasters for Seattle conservative talker KVI. Judge Wickham's ruling was on appeal as of March, 2006. If the ruling is upheld, it would mark a significant intrusion of campaign finance law into areas previously reserved as freedom of the press.

[edit] Criticisms of Campaign Finance Reform

All of these changes have faced criticism. Amongst the most common charges are unintended consequences, the propagation of extremely complicated instructions, and the discouraging of political giving. Many different threads exist within the reform community as well, and these are not always in agreement.

Most opponents claim that CFR infracts on free speech and it violates the First Amendment rights. The argument states that the purpose of the free speech clause of the First Amendment is the guarantee that people have the right to publish their political views. Under this view, when the laws prohibit people from advocating for or against political candidates by restricting the content of political advertising, the laws are in conflict with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of political speech.

Many opponents have charged that changes to campaign finance laws can produce unintended harmful consequences. For example, many political scientists say that the rise of PACs helped hasten the weakening of political parties in the United States, as candidates grew more entrepreneurial in their fundraising and gained access to campaign finance outside of party channels; opponents have noted (and decried) this unexpected change which has resulted in unusually long periods of fundraising and proportionally less time for campaigning. Another example is that disclosure requirements may lead individuals to avoid giving to challengers, and increase giving to incumbents, as individual large donors might wish to avoid angering the current office-holder. Other examples of unintended changes are common, and are used to justify avoiding major changes to campaign finance laws.

Others argue that money can never be separated from political influence. This has become painfully true with the influence and power exhibited in the 2004 elections by 527s such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Moveon.org. These two groups, among others, spent nearly $400 million on influencing the most recent elections, namely by heavily criticizing, respectively Sen. John Kerry and Pres. George W. Bush.

Critics of CFR include unlikely bedfellows, as both conservative interest groups (such as the NRA and the Christian Coalition) and liberal interest groups (AFL-CIO and ACLU) are vehemenently opposed to CFR.

In addition, many opponents point out that campaign finance regulations are excessively complicated. This, they say, prevents ordinary citizens from participating in the election process (especially from running for office) and limits participation to a wealthy elite who can afford the legal apparatus necessary to run. In modern campaigns, legal and accounting expenses are significant percentage of the overall budget. Opponents also claim that excessively complicated rules discourage participation more generally by dissuading people from even attempting political work or activism.

Many others find that CFR would be a financial albatross to the greater public, causing excessively big government.

Still, others point to the lack of systematic evidence that campaign contributions affect legislators' votes. In this regard, studies by political scientists have found that contributions are generally motivated by ideology and social connections.

[edit] Current proposals for reform

Despite the passage of McCain Feingold, reformers continue to promote a large number of new reforms, including restrictions on independent citizens' groups, creation of a more powerful enforcement agency, and government (or "public") financing of campaigns. There are several ways of instituting government financing.

One method, generally called Clean Money, Clean Elections, gives each candidate who chooses to participate a certain, set amount of money. In order to qualify for this money, the candidates must show a broad base of support by collecting a specified number of signatures and small (usually $5) contributions. The candidates are NOT allowed to accept outside donations or to use their own personal money if they receive this public funding. This procedure has been in place in races for all statewide and legislative offices in Arizona and Maine since 2000. Connecticut joined them by passing a Clean Elections law in 2005, along with the cities of Portland, Oregon and Albuquerque, New Mexico. 69% of the voters in Albuquerque voted Yes to Clean Elections.

Public Campaign ([1]) is organizing efforts for Clean Elections nationwide and the California Clean Money Campaign ([2]) is leading the effort in California. The website http://www.noprop89.org/ opposes it.

Many other states (like New Jersey) have some form of limited financial assistance for candidates. In Wisconsin in 2004, the state senate passed the Gubernatorial Office Regulation Order (the GORO bill) which created four stages of security to protect against fundraising fraud.

Another method allows the candidates to raise funds from private donors, but provides matching funds for the first chunk of donations. For instance, the government might "match" the first $250 of every donation. A system like this is currently in place in the U.S. presidential primaries.

Supporters of public financing claim that our democracy currently lacks fairness because wealthy individuals and special interests have far greater political speech because of the contributions far larger than those of ordinary citizens that they can afford to make and that "Clean Elections" are the only way to truly end the corruptive effects of large private contributions from politics. Opponents argue that this is an unrealistic goal, and further, say that monetary donations are one of the most common means for ordinary citizens to participate in politics. They also say that government subsidization of political speech is contrary to the spirit of democracy and/or capitalism, and that it is not the role of government to impose some abstract notion of "fairness" by force.

Opponents of public financing claim that the government should not spend taxpayer money to promote the partisan political viewpoints of candidates for office. Supporters respond that voters shouldn't have to only hear from mostly one partisan side because that side is better at raising money from special interests that would like to influence policy at the taxpayer's expense. Supporters say that elections should be decided by ideas, not by money. Opponents point out that if this is their concern, perhaps they should actually decide their votes according to ideas, rather than allowing their votes to be bought, then telling other people what they can do with their money.

In some places in which the laws were designed to favor the major parties, such as Connecticut, it has also faced criticism from minor parties, who often face large hurdles on access to public funds that don't trouble major-party candidates. Other laws, such as those in Arizona and Maine, are carefully designed so that the strongest candidates can qualify for funds regardless of party, while still assuring that fringe candidates won't receive public funds. The proposed Clean Money law in California ( pro,con) would treat major and minor parties differently but not to the same extent as Connecticut.

Other opponents of public financing claim that public financing has already corrupted the political process, with big government advocates buying voters' votes with promises of increases in entitlement programs, welfare, and pork barrel spending. Supporters say that when there's a level playing field, as they claim public funding provides, American voters can be trusted to make the "right" choices, and that elected officials will be accountable only to the voters, because the public paid for their campaigns, not big money special interests.

"Clean Money, Clean Elections" systems generally cost about $5 per voter per year, depending on whether the system is for local, state, or federal offices.

California has an initiative on the ballot in November 2006, Proposition 89, the "California Clean Money and Fair Elections Act" (pro,con), that would provide "Clean Money" public financing of political campaigns, strict contribution limits, and strong disclosure and enforcement provisions.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Campaign_finance_reform"
Personal tools