Campaign finance laws in the United States have been a contentious political issue since the early days of the union. The most recent major federal law affecting campaign finance was the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, also known as "McCain-Feingold". Key provisions of the law prohibited unregulated contributions to national political parties and limited the use of corporate and union money to fund ads discussing political issues within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary election; However, provisions of BCRA limiting corporate and union expenditures for issue advertising were overturned by the Supreme Court in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life.
Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He is the founder of Creative Commons and of Equal Citizens. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.
Campaign finance, also known as election finance, political donations or political finance, refers to the funds raised to promote candidates, political parties, or policy initiatives and referendums. Donors and recipients include individuals, corporations, political parties, and charitable organizations.
A publicly funded election is an election funded with money collected through income tax donations or taxes as opposed to private or corporate funded campaigns. It is a policy initially instituted after Nixon for candidates to opt into publicly funded presidential campaigns via optional donations from tax returns. It is an attempt to move toward a one voice, one vote democracy, and remove undue corporate and private entity dominance.
The financing of electoral campaigns in the United States happens at the federal, state, and local levels by contributions from individuals, corporations, political action committees, and sometimes the government. Campaign spending has risen steadily at least since 1990. For example, a candidate who won an election to the House of Representatives in 1990 spent on average $407,600, while the winner in 2022 spent on average $2.79 million; in the Senate, average spending for winning candidates went from $3.87 million to $26.53 million.
Nick Penniman is an American nonprofit executive and journalist who serves as the co-founder and CEO of Issue One, a nonprofit organization the mission of which is to strengthen American democracy and government ethics.
Bradley Alan Smith is the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. He previously served as commissioner, vice chairman, and chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2000 and 2005. He has held prior visiting appointments at Princeton University and West Virginia University. He is best known for his writing and activities on campaign finance regulation.
Fredric Michael Wertheimer is an American attorney, lobbyist, and activist notable for his work on campaign finance reform and other government integrity, transparency, and accountability issues.
Electoral reform in the United States refers to efforts to change American elections and the electoral system used in the United States.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding campaign finance laws and free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court held 5–4 that the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and other associations.
Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It is the sixth book by Harvard law professor and free culture activist Lawrence Lessig. In a departure from the topics of his previous books, Republic, Lost outlines what Lessig considers to be the systemic corrupting influence of special-interest money on American politics, and only mentions copyright and other free culture topics briefly, as examples. He argued that the Congress in 2011 spent the first quarter debating debit-card fees while ignoring what he sees as more pressing issues, including health care reform or global warming or the deficit. Lessig has been described in The New York Times as an "original and dynamic legal scholar."
The term corporate donation refers to any financial contribution made by a corporation to another organization that furthers the contributor's own objectives. Two major kinds of such donations deserve specific consideration, charitable as well as political donations.
The American Anti-Corruption Act (AACA), sometimes shortened to Anti-Corruption Act, is a piece of model legislation designed to limit the influence of money in American politics by overhauling lobbying, transparency, and campaign finance laws. It was crafted in 2011 "by former Federal Election Commission chairman Trevor Potter in consultation with dozens of strategists, democracy reform leaders and constitutional attorneys from across the political spectrum," and is supported by reform organizations such as Represent.Us, which advocate for the passage of local, state, and federal laws modeled after the AACA. It is designed to limit or outlaw practices perceived to be major contributors to political corruption.
Every Voice was an American nonprofit, progressive liberal political advocacy organization. The organization was formed in 2014 upon the merger of the Public Campaign Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) group, and the Friends of Democracy. Every Voice, along with its affiliated Super PAC, Every Voice Action, advocated for campaign finance reform in the United States via public financing of political campaigns and limitations on political donations. The organization's president, David Donnelly, has said "We fully embrace the irony of working through a Super PAC to fight the influence of Super PACs."
The 2016 presidential campaign of Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard University and cofounder of Creative Commons, was formally announced on September 6, 2015, as Lessig confirmed his intentions to run for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States in 2016. Lessig had promised to run if his exploratory committee raised $1 million by Labor Day, which it accomplished one day early. He described his candidacy as a referendum on campaign finance reform and electoral reform legislation.
The Citizen Equality Act of 2017 is a draft piece of legislation proposed by former 2016 American presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig. The act was the centerpiece of Lessig's campaign platform, encompassing his plans to improve political equality including campaign finance reform, expansion of voting access, and revised districting laws. Lessig had stated that if elected, he would make these reforms the first priority of his presidency. At the start of his campaign, he announced his candidacy as a "referendum," stating that he would step down upon the enactment of the Citizen Equality Act and turn the presidency over to the vice president. In an October 2015 interview on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, he retracted this statement and expressed his intention to stay on as president if elected. On November 2, 2015, Lessig ended his bid for the presidency, citing changes in Democratic Party rules that excluded him from the stage during televised debates.
RepresentUs is a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization focused on ending political corruption in the United States. Funded by donations and grants, it is run mostly by volunteers aligned in a grassroots organizing network, and it has brought in high-profile celebrities to advance its message. It advertises, produces videos, and generates publicity with speeches and demonstrations and protests.
A campaign finance reform amendment refers to any proposed amendment to the United States Constitution to authorize greater restrictions on spending related to political speech, and to overturn Supreme Court rulings which have narrowed such laws under the First Amendment. Several amendments have been filed since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and the Occupy movement.
A 501(h) election or Conable election is a procedure in United States tax law that allows a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization to participate in lobbying limited only by the financial expenditure on that lobbying, regardless of its overall extent. This allows organizations taking the 501(h) election to potentially perform a large amount of lobbying if it is done using volunteer labor or through inexpensive means. The 501(h) election is available to most types of 501(c)(3) organizations that are not churches or private foundations. It was introduced by Representative Barber Conable as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1976 and codified as 26 U.S.C. § 501(h), and the corresponding Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations were finalized in 1990.
The Freedom to Vote Act, introduced as H.R. 1, is a bill in the United States Congress intended to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, ban partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders.
