Politics and elections 101paign Reform Act (BCRA) was passed in 2002. The Act prohibited national
political parties from raising or spending soft money and it came into effect
before the presidential election of 2004 but, as we have seen, the amount
spent in that election reached record heights. In part this increase was due to
a loophole in the BCRA. Although the Act outlawed the raising of soft money
by political parties, it did not prohibit the raising of soft money by other types
of organisation that might be aligned with one party or the other, and many
such groups were indeed formed to raise money. These became known as
advocacy groups, or ‘527 groups’, after a section of federal law which exempts
from taxation the raising of money for political purposes. $435 million was
raised in this way in 2004 and so the saga continues. Money, large amounts of
it, remains indispensable to the working of the American electoral system.
The 1974 Act also initiated an interesting approach to the problem of ‘fair-
ness’ in the electoral system by introducing the public funding of presidential
election campaigns. At the stage of the presidential campaign proper, after
the candidates have been chosen, they may opt to finance their campaigns
from the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. The federal government pro-
vides money for the national conventions of each of the major parties, and
funds are also available to pay part of the cost of primary election campaigns
for candidates from major and minor parties. Of course part of the original
rationale of this provision of taxpayer’s money to fund political parties was
to offset the restrictions which were being placed on their ability to raise
money directly. In spite of the fact that the restrictions enacted in the FECA
and the BCRA have been largely ineffectual, the public funding of elections
continues. In 2004 the two major party nominees received $74.6 million
each in public funds to conduct their election campaigns; to help finance
the organisation of the national conventions the two major parties received
$14.9 million each from the US Treasury.
It can now be seen just how far the electoral machinery in the United
States emphasises the geographical and sectional influences in its politics,
but at the same time allows pressure groups and individuals to influence the
outcome of elections through financial contributions, with all the dangers
inherent in that activity. In Western democracies the use of geographical
constituencies provides a built-in tendency to stress regional differences of
interest rather than class or pluralistic factors. In the United States the con-
stitutional provisions that decentralise power and authority powerfully rein-
force this tendency. In other countries ideological and organisational forces
have modified, sometimes almost obliterated, the built-in emphasis upon
geography in the electoral system, but in the United States the party system
and the electoral system have tended to reinforce each other’s decentralising
tendencies. Only the presidency acts as a centralising force and the selection
and election of presidents are by no means free of sectional influences. Thus
the party system and the electoral system discharge one vital function: they
select the candidates to fill political office. But because of their sectional
nature they are relatively poor at performing another function vital to the