Essay --

Saving Our Democracy: Campaign Finance Reform Introduction Since the founding of the United States, money has played a large role in electoral politics. Of course, there was a time when political campaigns were much smaller than they are now – before television, radio, and the Internet. Modern campaigns cost millions, or even billions, of dollars, especially in presidential elections. This enormous increase in spending over the last few decades has caused many to fear for the future of American democracy. If so few can contribute so much, why would politicians even bother to listen to the average voter? Lawmakers have taken steps on numerous occasions to reign in this political spending and even the playing field for the average voter, but that would mostly be undone with the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2010 case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This controversial decision struck down many regulations, citing that they violated the First Amendment. In the election cycles since, we have seen an unprec edented wave of shadowy organizations contributing unimaginable sums of money, drowning out everyone else. In order to understand how the Supreme Court came to it’s conclusion and how the average voter can ultimately overcome it, we must understand the history of campaign finance law in the United States. Background Concerns about corporate influence in national elections found its way into the halls of Congress after President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1904 re-election. President Roosevelt himself suggested to Congress that they make a point of passing legislation that would ban corporate contributions to political campaigns. In 1907, the Tillman Act was passed, which did just that. Those that violated t... ...The financing in both states is funded by tax check-offs, as well as fines paid by past violations of their campaign finance laws. Many of these programs also contained a provision that granted matching funds to the publicly financed candidate to counter what a nonparticipating candidate raised, but the Supreme Court struck this down in 2011 in the case Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett. The majority opinion stated that this matching of funds interfered with First Amendment rights, because it could cause donors to withhold their spending – or as the Supreme Court saw it, their speech. After the Bennett decision, New York City devised what has become known as â€Å"flexible financing†, a system in which candidates receive funds that match their own fundraising as opposed to their opponents’ fundraising. Shareholder Authorization Conclusion