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.
In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. The legal term PAC was created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition. At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), according to the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state's election laws.
The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, commonly known as the McCain–Feingold Act or BCRA, is a United States federal law that amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which regulates the financing of political campaigns. Its chief sponsors were senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain (R-AZ). The law became effective on 6 November 2002, and the new legal limits became effective on January 1, 2003.
A 527 organization or 527 group is a type of U.S. tax-exempt organization organized under Section 527 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. A 527 group is created primarily to influence the selection, nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates to federal, state or local public office.
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 U.S. 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.
Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U.S. 449 (2007), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that issue ads may not be banned from the months preceding a primary or general election.
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.
Hillary: The Movie is a 2008 political documentary about United States Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. It was produced by the conservative non-profit organization Citizens United. The film was scheduled to be offered as video-on-demand on cable TV right before the Democratic primaries in January 2008, but would have been classified as "electioneering communication", which was made illegal under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, by the Federal Election Commission. The producers went to U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to get a declaration that they could show their movie and promotional ads for it despite BCRA. This case was titled Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and its final decision at the U.S. Supreme Court resulted in a major change in campaign finance law.
Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) government watchdog group in the United States. CLC supports strong enforcement of United States campaign finance laws. Trevor Potter, former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission, is CLC's founding president.
In politics, particularly the politics of the United States, dark money refers to spending to influence elections, public policy, and political discourse, where the source of the money is not disclosed to the public.
Wolf-PAC is an American nonpartisan political action committee formed in 2011 with the goal of adding an "amendment to the United States Constitution to ensure balance, integrity, and transparency to our national system of campaign finance".
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, 572 U.S. 185 (2014), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on campaign finance. The decision was partially overruled with respect to aggregate base limits concerning two years election cycles which is located under Title 2 U.S.C. Ch. 14 Sub Ch. 1 Section 441a (a)(3)(B) which concerns aggregate limits on expenditures within; The [[Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. The cited section listed above, is the exact place in the Unites States Election Code which imposed a limit on contributions an individual can make over a two-year period to all national party and federal candidate committees, which the Court held is [un]constitutional. See Buckley v. Valeo 424 U.S. 1 at 424 under footnote 21 (1976.) now overruled at McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission 572 US. at 424 (2014) under Syllabus part (c) (3).
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.
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.
FEC v. National Conservative PAC, 470 U.S. 480 (1985), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States striking down expenditure prohibitions of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), which regulates the fundraising and spending in political campaigns. The FECA is the primary law that places regulations on campaign financing by limiting the amount that may be contributed. The Act established that no independent political action committee may contribute more than $1,000 to any given presidential candidate in support of a campaign.
Equal Citizens is an American non-profit, non-partisan group that is "dedicated to reforms that will achieve citizen equality". It was founded in late 2016 by Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig to continue the effort to bring about the set of reforms he proposed during his 2016 presidential campaign. Notably, as its inaugural campaign, the group launched "Electors Trust" immediately after the 2016 general election. They did this to provide free and strictly confidential legal support to any elector who wished to vote their conscience. Working together with several other groups, such as the Hamilton Electors and celebrities, the campaign resulted in the largest number of "faithless" electoral votes ever cast in a single presidential election.
Shadow campaigns refers to spending meant to influence political outcomes where the source of the money is not publicly disclosed or is difficult to trace. United States campaign finance law has been regulated by the Federal Election Commission since its creation in the wake of the Watergate Scandal in 1975, and in the years following Citizens United v. FEC, there has been a rise in outside special interest groups spending money on political campaigns in the United States. Dark money leaves voters uninformed about important political information and it can obscure potential conflicts of interest for judges and legislators alike.
