Does Campaign Finance In The United States Need To Be Fixed?

Obama:
President Obama famously eschewed large corporate donors in favor of grassroots fundraising and social media in 2008, casting a wide net of supporters. Following a similar strategy, the 2012 campaign garnered hundreds of thousands of small individual donations in its first several months, shattering 2008 records. President Obama has stated on public record his support for increased disclosure for corporate and individual donors as well as efforts to limit the high-value contributions from corporations that are permitted under Citizens United.

Disclosure laws are intended to bring transparency to the electoral process: By scrutinizing the sources of campaign funds, voters can gain insight into how candidates intend to appoint justices and pass laws while in office. But the Supreme Court sided with Republican opponents to President Obama?s DISCLOSE Act, which failed to gather a majority of votes in Congress in 2010. Under this act, harsher disclosure requirements have the potential to dissuade prospective contributors, which by extension chills free speech and overall participation in the marketplace of ideas. Opponents have expressed other problems with the language of the DISCLOSE Act, including seemingly arbitrary exemptions for large and long-standing organizations?criteria which capture most labor unions. On the other hand, without strict disclosure rules, the legislative agendas of elected officials become more opaque, and the public has fewer ways to hold them accountable. Voters would be forced to rely on the goodwill of their elected officials to voluntarily disclose the sources of funding, a system which generates negative incentives to bury the information that is perhaps most critical and relevant to the public interest.

Additionally, cyclical concerns abound: If it is the case that non-disclosure yields higher fundraising figures, then it becomes optimal for every politician to adopt a strategy of opacity in order to fare better than his or her opponents. A culture of corporate electioneering aided by legally-sanctioned anonymity would likely demoralize voters and funnel candidates? priorities toward courting big business at great cost to the average American citizen during and after the election.

While it may be a stretch to assert that Citizens United granted corporations ?personhood,? the impacts of the ruling are far-reaching for campaign finance law. Even small corporations have disproportionate spending power compared to individuals. Oftentimes decisions in corporations are made by boards of executives and not aggregates of working-class citizens, exacerbating the influence of those who already wield greater financial and political capital. If money is indeed speech, then corporations speak much, much louder than individuals from the outset. Some contend that the voices of unions, which are similarly protected under the same ruling, lend a degree of partisan balance?implicitly acknowledging that the divide is indeed tinged with partisanship?but realistically, even the largest union contributions pale in comparison to those of Fortune 500 companies. Distortion in the marketplace of ideas increases reliance on negative campaigning, which hurts voter turnout and morale while usually detracting from substantive dialogue about policy issues. It also raises the barriers of entry for third-party candidates and more moderate candidates during elections and primaries, more deeply entrenching the two-party system.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/does-campaign-finance-reform-debate_n_1860817.html

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