Large donations would still be possible, but they would be met with the requirement of taxation. In order to ensure that candidates and voters can rely on credible advertisements, the candidates themselves need a larger voice in regards to problems with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of Through campaign finance reform, viable third parties can be created.
A major problem with third parties is that they do not receive nearly as much funding as the two major parties. Closing the gap of funding between these two groups would help assure Americans that third parties are a viable alternative to the two traditional parties. An increasing percentage of Americans are dissatisfied with the current two-party system, but many simply do not see a third party as an option because they are greatly overshadowed by the Democratic and Republican parties.
Third parties could bring issues to the political agenda that were previously unaddressed because both of the major parties agree on the issue, such as in the case of drone warfare. Third parties would help with the polarization of the country because voters could choose based on different issues rather than the doctrines of the Democratic and Republican parties. A major issue with the current two-party system is that the ideologies of the two parties have become polarizing for many Americans.
The overall turnout for the midterm election cycle was A decreased reliance on the two-party system would mean less polarization, which would increase the likelihood of moderates going to the polls and participating in government. Changes in the structure of campaign finance could promote different parties that would better represent the beliefs of Americans.
Ultimately, the current system of campaign funding in the United States needs to be reformed to create a better government, society, and country. Super PACs and c 4 organizations negatively impact American politics by creating massive sources of funding for political elections. These funds in turn lead to stiff barriers of entry for potential candidates, distractions for current officials, and a system in which money matters more than policy.
These problems could be solved by incorporating a tax on large donations or adopting a public form of campaign funding as seen in Norway. This issue crosses the aisle and is something that even the most polarized politicians agree should be changed.
Reform in campaign finance will help fight the polarization that plagues America and hopefully increase voter turnout by getting moderates to the polls. It is simply irresponsible to allow the current process of campaign funding to continue. Officials who support campaign finance reform should be elected because the longevity and credibility of the political system depend on it. America should be a place in which copious amounts of money are not required to run for political office.
The heart of politics should be the principles at hand, not groups that are able to control the government through the size of their wallets. The Center for Responsive Politics, n. Bennet, James. The Atlantic, Oct. The Campaign Finance Institute, n. Cantor, Joseph E. Campaign Finance. United States Foreign Press Center, Confessore, Nicholas.
New York Times, 26 Jan. Bernie Sanders, n. Gold, Matea. The Washington Post, 23 Oct. Jones, Jeffrey M. Knowles, David. McCarthy, Justin. Miller, S.
The Washington Times, 8 Sept. Nicks, Denver. Time Magazine, 31 July Parti, Tarini. Riffkin, Rebecca. Schmitt, Mark. The Weekly Wonk, 7 Apr. Tau, Byron. The Wall Street Journal, 22 Apr. Santa Clara University, n. The New York Times, 11 Nov. Thompson, Nick. Given these circumstances, it is almost impossible to argue that campaign-finance reform has improved government. In both of Governing 's last two studies, in and , Utah and Virginia were ranked the best-governed states in the nation. Utah and Virginia also tied for first place in the first Governing survey, from , and Utah ranked first in the second study in What do these two states have in common?
Among other things, they appear on the short list of states that have no limits on campaign spending and contributions. Meanwhile, states such as Arizona and Maine — which have enacted full taxpayer financing of their state races — score unimpressive marks. In terms of management, Governing ranked Arizona in the middle of the pack, tied for 14 th with 17 other states. Maine was ranked next to last — ahead of only New Hampshire. This alone does not prove an inverse relationship between campaign-finance laws and good governance, of course, but it does help to show the absence of a direct relationship.
At the very least, campaign-finance restrictions do not seem to improve government. As campaign-finance reform has failed to achieve its goals, it has also exacted serious costs. Reducing the amount that may be spent, and constraining the ways it may be used, can thus hurt the quality of political discourse. In addition to liberal donors like the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation, the groups' financial backers included several large corporations and firms, among them Bear Stearns, Philip Morris, and Enron.
Yet somehow the reformers successfully branded their opponents as the purveyors and defenders of a corrupt system, bent on protecting it for personal gain. This gambit won the reformers some moral authority, which they wielded to great effect — making deep inroads with Congress, the press, and the public.
Americans, like most free people, react with visceral disgust to the notion of banning books. It is seen as a fundamental violation of the freedom of speech and the open exchange of ideas. To equate campaign-finance reform with book-banning is to threaten the moral high ground of the case for campaign-finance limits. Ceding that high ground would be very costly for reformers, since their efforts have produced so little in the way of demonstrable results.
But there is simply no question that restricting the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights — no less than side-stepping the limits on government power established by the Constitution itself — is inseparable from the movement's goals. Restrictions on campaign contributions and spending affect core First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, and assembly.
While the Supreme Court has quite correctly never held that "money is speech," it has recognized, equally correctly, that limiting political spending serves to limit speech by restricting citizens' ability to deliver their political messages. In fact, only one of the 19 Supreme Court justices to serve in the past 30 years — John Paul Stevens — has ever argued that political campaign and expenditure limits should not be treated as First Amendment concerns.
Those who doubt that basic constitutional rights are at stake should imagine how they would react if the Supreme Court were to interpret the free exercise clause as allowing the faithful to hold their religious beliefs, but not to spend money to rent a church hall, purchase hymnals, or engage in church missions.
Presumably, the move would be seen as much more than a mere regulation of property. These limits on expression do not affect only wealthy donors or prominent candidates. On the contrary: Groups without a broad base of support are the ones that rely most heavily on large donors to make their voices heard. Their base of support is simply too narrow. Established companies might be able to raise large amounts of capital from tens of thousands of small investors, but capital-intensive start-ups would be doomed.
So it is with political entrepreneurs, who would get nowhere without large donors. In the s, for example, large-scale spending by Ross Perot gave voice to millions of Americans who were concerned that the major parties were failing to address the national deficit.
Perot's spending did not "drown out" ordinary citizens, but rather helped them to be heard. In , early contributions from a few big donors to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth allowed the group to get its message on the air at a time when the national media were ignoring it. Once the group's first ads were seen by the public, the organization was bombarded with hundreds of thousands of small donations — and of course millions more supported or were influenced by the group's message.
Similarly, large contributions by George Soros to MoveOn. For example, in , a group of neighbors in the unincorporated community of Parker North, Colorado, joined together to fight annexation into the neighboring city of Parker.
Because they printed yard signs, made copies of a flyer, and formed an e-mail discussion group, they were charged with operating as an unregistered political committee. Three years later, their case remains entangled in the courts. All of his campaign materials contained the name and address of his campaign committee.
As Madison understood, some people will always try to use government for their private aims. But with the Madisonian restraints on government rent-seeking largely discarded, campaign-finance regulation becomes a futile and misguided effort — one that, as Madison argued, is not only bound to fail, but also bound to make matters worse. The law was easily evaded, it turns out, by having corporations make "expenditures" independently of campaigns, or by having executives make personal contributions reimbursed by their companies.
And when the Tillman Act was extended to include unions in , unions and corporations formed the first political action committees to collect contributions from members, shareholders, and managers to use for political purposes.
The National Rifle Association responded by launching its own satellite radio station to take advantage of the law's exception for broadcasters.
Citizens United began to make movies. Preventing this type of "circumvention" of the law has been a fixation of the "reform community" from the outset. Yet each effort has led to laws more restrictive of basic rights, more convoluted, and more detached from Madison's insights. Each effort also appears to be self-defeating, since the circumvention argument knows no bounds.
As Madison would have appreciated, every time we close off one avenue of political participation, politically active Americans will turn to the next most effective legal means of carrying on their activity. That next most effective means will then become the loophole that must be closed. This is how the Citizens United case found its way to the Supreme Court.
When the case was reargued in September, solicitor general Elena Kagan — taking poor Malcolm Stewart's place at the podium — assured the Court that the government had never taken action against a book, and presumably never would. And Kagan did not back away from the government's position that it had the authority to ban books should they, at some point, become a problem.
Until Citizens United , such Orwellian newspeak was largely buried in obscure academic journals. Malcolm Stewart's sin was to state openly the implications of campaign-finance reform — and, in doing so, to strip away the veneer of "good government" and moral authority so carefully cultivated by reform advocates and so important to their power. As a result, Stewart might have launched the beginning of the end for America's failed experiment to limit factions by destroying the liberty that allows for them in the first place.
This anecdotal evidence supports comprehensive statistical analysis: The key spending variable is not incumbent spending, or the ratio of incumbent to challenger spending, but the absolute level of challenger spending. Challengers, however, need to build that recognition. Once a challenger has spent enough to achieve similar name and issue recognition, campaign spending limits kick in. Meanwhile the incumbent is just beginning to spend.
In other words, just as a challenger starts to become competitive, campaign spending limits choke off political competition. However, when it comes to political regulation and criticism of government, legislators have strong vested interests that lead them to mistake what is good for them with what is good for the country.
Government is inherently untrustworthy when it comes to regulating political speech, and this tendency to use government power to silence political criticism and stifle competition is a major reason why we have the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has recognized the danger that campaign finance regulation poses to freedom of speech, and for the past 20 years, beginning with Buckley v.
Valeo, has struck down many proposed restrictions on political spending and advocacy, including mandatory spending limits. Supporters of campaign finance reform like to ridicule Buckley as equating money with speech.
0コメント