Campaign Funding

In Chapter 10, we learn a lot about the election of our political leaders, the extent to which people vote, how candidates campaign, the outcomes of the election, the electoral college, and funding.There are many ways of getting funded including personal funding, Political Action Committees, political party funding, public funding, 527s, 501s, and super PACs. Without this funding, people would not be able to advertise, get information from polls, or put themselves out there nearly as much as they do today. Over time, the cost of funding each campaign increases. This can hurt our democracy because campaigners will take sides on issues that coincide with the people who will be able to provide them with the most money. There are ways that the government has tried to stop this from happening, but it doesn’t necessarily work. According to Opensecrets, the cap that one individual person can contribute as of 2015, is $2,700. In congress, 48% of the funds come from these individuals, so they aren’t going to stop trying to please these people. They are focused on the rich individuals, which could prohibit other people’s opinions from getting heard.

Another problem with political funding is PACs and super PACs. PACs are able to give money directly to the candidate, whereas super PACs cannot. The super PAC was born in 2010, so it is still very new, but has caused problems in our government. According to CNN, they have been known to be very corrupt. Wealthy business owners and corporations may get involved in a super PAC to push their own agendas. Even though they can’t speak directly, candidates are able to talk over strategy with the super PAC managers. This again help promote the interests of the people funding the campaign. Opensecrets reports that 23% of all funds given to an individual is in a PAC. This means that overall, 71% of funds come from rich people, corporations or organizations trying to get their interests met. This proves that equal representation in our democracy may not be totally true. Not everyone has the same say in politics, and since money is so critical to success and power in our society, it makes it very hard for rich people who want to help to not be met with rewards from the person they support. This could be fixed by possibly putting a cap on the amount of money people can put into a super PAC. This would then make it similar to the regular individual funding.

The funding of people’s campaigns are hurting our democracy. If it keeps increasing at the rate it is, we will only have more problems. American campaigns are much more expensive than many countries. We can learn from other countries to cut down our costs and be more efficient in campaigning. According to MIC, Americans can benefit from Norway and cut down spending by banning advertising on radio and television, as well as making the election season rather short. This would help our country to help avoid the problems that occur with donations.

https://mic.com/articles/91111/what-america-can-learn-from-norway-s-success-in-regulating-campaign-finance#.FPMGJ0ML9

https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/limits.php

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/15/opinion/wertheimer-super-pacs/index.html

6 Responses to "Campaign Funding"

Grant Golden says:

October 29, 2017 at 8:50 pm

I think you make a great point in terms of how this hurts our democracy to a certain extent. With the rich using their money to fund campaigns and get their ideas through it does limit what the lower socioeconomic classes are able to do in terms of being heard. With that being said, would putting too many limits and more campaign funding rules also “hurt” or go against democracy? If you tell these wealthy business owners how much they can donate or contribute to a campaign, technically speaking that is going against some of their basic rights. If they have the money to do so, then they have every right to donate however much of their money they want to support a campaign. I think this issue is something that may never get fixed because of this. I agree with the fact that every voice needs to be heard and more than anyone the less fortunate need to be heard. But to try and out caps or limits on what the rich can do with their money that they earn in terms of what they want to support, I don’t know how much farther it can be taken.
Jackson Grace says:

October 29, 2017 at 9:53 pm

You are right. Corporations and rich people are more able to leverage the government to work in their favor than others. This does mean that our government does not have perfectly equal representation. However, whether it means that government is broken is a separate question. People will fall different ways on the issue, even though I’d say that most people are uncomfortable with unequal representation. I think that corporations should have some ability to influence government, despite not being real people like you and I. Maybe their influence should be restricted in some way (e.g. capping their contributions to politicians), but I think that the consequences of preventing them from any sort of political action would be worse than the current state. If we barred corporations from political action, we could find ourselves in a political climate very hostile to pro-business policies. This could cause the relocation of many firms to offshore locations and harm the US economy. This is a bit of a slippery slope argument, but it could happen. That being said, you’re right. PACs and Super PACs do make our government less democratic by making representation unequal. However, our goal might not need to be perfect democracy as this could work less than a more pragmatic alternative.
Colby Ritten says:

October 29, 2017 at 10:09 pm

After reading this blog post it made me think of a very popular saying that my parents always told me which was “The world revolves around money.” Sadly, this blog post only supports that statement. It seems almost unfair that only a few people with the most money are able to implement their ideas through campaigns. I believe that if we are able to make campaigns cheaper and set a limit on donations, we can reduce the amount of big time donations and allow more smaller donations to come in. Having only small donations would allow more people to involve themselves in a campaign and would also get rid of having only a few people donate to have only their ideas in it.
To reduce the amount of spending in a campaign, you said ban all advertising on the radio and television. This is a good idea because the bulk of campaign spending is on advertising but another good way is to cut back on events. Candidates have so many events in the same places where they say the same thing more than once. This means that people have heard what they have had to say multiple times, therefore the candidates should not spend anymore time in that location. There is a point where they are having diminishing returns which means they are spending money while getting nothing in return. If there message didn’t work the first time, then it won’t work a second time.
Austin Liptrot says:

October 29, 2017 at 10:13 pm

I don’t believe that this issue is as one sided as you seemed to make it. While you do bring up a number of strong points, such as the influence that committees can seemingly purchase and corruption inside these organizations. However, these groups can help democracy. Not all political officials have the money to run for office on their own, and by using these committees, can run more effectively. This allows for more people to participate in our democracy. Without the help of these committee’s our politician’s would need to fund their campaigns solely on their own, severely narrowing the pool of possible candidates. Another common criticism of PACs is that they fund negative ad campaigns against other candidates. This however, doesn’t deride from our democracy either. If what candidates can say about each other is limited then our access to political information decreases. Without this we lose the potential to more accurately understand the people we vote for.
Lauren Rothenberg says:

October 29, 2017 at 10:21 pm

You make a very valid argument. The unequal representation resulting from this imbalance on political campaign contributions inevitably creates biases. I agree that this imbalance has the potential to be harmful to the functionality of our democracy. This inequality directly contradicts the idea of political equality which is one of the fundamental principles underlying the success of our democracy. However, another basic principle of democracy is popular sovereignty, which essentially refers to the idea of “the people” having the rights to dictate our political system by which we are able to communicate. Therefore, I disagree with your suggestion that putting caps or limits on what the wealthy are able to do is a valid resolution to this imbalance. If this was the approach our nation takes, we would merely be compromising one principles for another.
Seyoum Settepani says:

October 31, 2017 at 2:21 pm

I agree with Kendall that these super PACs cause an unequal representation with the organizations that are funding the campaign as well as a disadvantage to candidates that that not receiving the same amount of aid that is given to their counterparts. To fix a problem as drastic as this, I think that the implementation of a federal funded campaign with strict restrictions on receiving aid in the form of cash or in kind contributions, from all donors may be a more effective plan. This is because putting a cap or limit on contributions may not be effective as there are always other ways to influence a candidate.

Comments are closed.