CAMPAIGN FINANCE REGULATIONS
Campaign fi nance regulations place restrictions on what
Americans can do to infl uence election outcomes. Suppose you
are a wealthy person or the head of a corporation with deep
pockets. Under current law, you and your corporation can only
donate about $15,000 to a candidate’s campaign; corporations
have to form a political action committee to do so and can-
not pay for the contribution with business revenues. You can
also form an organization called a 527 that can run campaign
ads designed to help elect your preferred candidates or donate
to an existing 527. You can also spend unlimited amounts on
independent expenditures, efforts that help a particular can-
didate, as long as the candidate or campaign has no control
over these expenditures. But if your goal is to help your favor-
ite candidate directly, whether by a cash contribution or an ad
linked to the campaign, you face serious limits.
These limits on campaign spending arguably confl ict with
fundamental tenets of American democracy. The Bill of Rights
states that Congress cannot abridge “freedom of speech, or of
the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” One
interpretation of the First Amendment is that people should
be free to spend whatever they want on contesting elections—
excluding bribes, threats, and other illegal actions, of course.
Thus, ending limits on campaign contributions would support
free speech rights, although in practice it would affect only
a small number of individuals, those who had large sums of
money to spend.
The principal argument for restricting campaign contribu-
tions is that money conveys political power. That is, if we let rich
people spend as much as they want on electioneering, they could
control election outcomes by giving their favored candidates
enough money to win regardless of who ran against them. This
argument implies that removing contribution restrictions would
result in election outcomes driven purely by campaign spending
rather than by voters’ preferences. (Of course, the lack of limits
on independent expenditures works against this logic.)
However, even with unlimited funds, it is hard to get vot-
ers’ attention—and harder still to change their minds. There
are many examples of candidates who lost despite outspend-
ing their opponents. And there is no evidence in the corporate
world that a company that spends enough on advertising can
dominate its market and put its competitors out of business.
Even so, because money for ads is a necessary component
of a political campaign, the possibility remains that a rich donor
could change election outcomes by giving large sums to chal-
lengers in congressional elections. Many challengers never fi nd
out how voters would respond to their platforms because they
lack the funds to run a full-blown campaign, including paying
for an extensive ad campaign. Though most poorly funded
challengers would stand no chance of beating their incumbent
opponents even with an unlimited advertising budget, some
might. And in close races, giving a candidate extra funds to
increase his or her get-out-the-vote efforts or to run additional
campaign ads might be enough to change the outcome.You Decide
In a 2010 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Citizens
United group (whose leader, David Bossie, is shown here) should
have been allowed to release the fi lm Hillary: The Movie during
the 2008 presidential campaigns. This decision opened the door to
more campaign spending by groups and corporations.HOW DO VOTERS DECIDE?| 211Critical Thinking Questions
- Limits on individual campaign contributions
guard against allowing wealthy people to domi-
nate elections. What are some of the possible
drawbacks of such regulations? - Since the Citizens United decision in 2010, cor-
porations and unions (not just individuals) are
allowed unlimited political expenditures as long
as they are independent of a candidate’s campaign
organization. Why do you think independent
expenditures are less regulated than direct contri-
butions to campaigns?