Los Angeles Mission College
Lecture – Political Participation and Voting and Elections
Part 1 – Political Participation and Voting
1. Forms of Political Participation. Political participation refers to a wide range of activities designed to influence government. Today, voting is the typical form of participation, although political participation also includes activities such as petitioning, protesting, and campaigning. By voting, citizens seeks to determine who will govern. However, in recent years fewer Americans have exercised their right to vote. Nonelectoral political participation can indicate in greater detail what citizens want or how intensely they feel about issues. It takes many forms, including the following:
A. Lobbying. Lobbying is the strategy by which organized interests seek to influence the passage of legislation by exerting direct pressure on members of the legislature. By lobbying, citizens attempt to determine what those in power will do. Many interest groups employ professional lobbyists. Congress and the bureaucracy are also lobbied every year by thousands of volunteers who call, write, and petition elected and appointed officials.
B. Public Relations. Public relations is the attempt, usually through the use of paid consultants, to establish a favorable relationship with the public and influence its political opinions. In this case, corporations and interest groups want to influence public opinion to sway citizens in support of their goals. For example, oil companies air TV commercials to affirm their support for a clean environment to create goodwill in the public eye and to avoid future regulations.
C. Litigation is the attempt to use the courts to achieve a political goal. A lawsuit or legal proceeding seeks to affect policy; as a form of political participation, litigation is an attempt to seek relief in a court of law – for example, environmental class action suits in which a settlement results in the establishment of new environmental regulations.
D. Protest is a political participation that involves assembling crowds to confront a government or other official organization. Most Americans reject violent protest, but they recognize that peaceful protest is protected by the 1st Amendment. For example, recently groups opposing the size of the federal government staged Tea Party marches and demonstrations.
Generally, alternative political action requires more time, effort, or money than voting does. Voting gives ordinary citizens a more equal chance to participate in politics.
A. Voting. In practice, citizen participation in the United States is limited to voting and other electoral activities such as campaigning. However, American voter turnout (the percentage of eligible individuals who actually vote) is relatively low. The American system overwhelmingly counts on electoral participation to take direction. As a result, suffrage (the right to vote, also called the franchise) is by law available for all American citizens over the age of eighteen. Electoral participation studies show turnout has declined. These studies also conclude that the least well off Americans are least likely to participate and the most advantaged are likeliest to vote.
1. Voting Rights. In principle, states determine voting requirements. However, constitutional amendments, federal statutes, and federal court decisions have limited the states’ discretion over voting rights because of civil rights conflicts. In the past, the right to vote belonged to white, property owning, tax paying males over the age of twenty one. After the Civil War, the federal government tried to change this. However, the southern states create the “Jim Crow” racial segregation system. This system included tools to prevent all blacks from voting, including the poll tax (a state imposed tax on voters as a prerequisite for registration). In the 1960s, civil rights movements demanded the restoration of African American voting rights. The 1965 Voting Rights Act resulted in the restoration of black voting rights. Poll taxes were rendered unconstitutional in national elections by the 24th amendment. In 1966, the Supreme Court outlawed poll taxes and literacy tests in state elections. Women won the right to vote in 1920 with the adoption of the 19th amendment. The most recent voting rights expansion took place in 1971 during the Vietnam War with the 26th amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
2. Voting and Civic Education. Americans are taught to equate citizenship with electoral participation. Civic training is a legally required part of the elementary and secondary school curriculum.
3. Voter Participation. The United States’ voter participation, or turnout, is very low. Studies conclude voter turnout is tied to ethnic group, education level, employment status, and age. This trend has created a political process with strong class bias.
II. Who Participates and How? The original American political community, the group of citizens who are eligible to vote and who participate in American political life, consisted of white adult male property holders. “We the people” expanded in the next two centuries as a result of forces organized around conflicts over race, gender, religious identity, and age. The ongoing participation groups with distinctive social and cultural identities has transformed altering political conditions and changing political debates.
A. Participation and New Technologies. The Internet has helped to increase the participation of some groups. Although a socioeconomic gap continues to plague participation rates in the United States, the 2008 election revealed a promising increase among young people that was largely attributable to Internet based mobilization of this demographic.
B. African Americans. Political and legal pressure and protest played a part in the modern civil rights movements. These victories, and the organizations behind them, had an impact on the number of black citizens exercising their voting rights. De facto racial segregation remains a fact of life in the United States, however, and new problems have emerged, such as black urban poverty. Public opinion and voting evidence show African Americans continue to vote as a bloc despite economic differences. Some analysts argue that the structure of party competition frustrates African American attempts to win policy benefits through political participation. The votes of African Americans are taken for granted by the Democratic party and not courted by the Republican party.
C. Latinos. Known as the “sleeping giant,” the Latino group has low political mobilization levels as result of low registration and naturalization levels. Today, the Latino group is of critical importance due to rapid population growth, increased political participation, and uncertain political party affiliation. The increased Latino vote resulted in public officials immediate attention to learn what Latinos want from government.
D. Asian Americans. The diverse Asian national identities with different experiences have impeded the development of group based political power. With a population of 15 million in 2009, this group is too small to exercise a significant influence in national politics. Still, in some states such as California, Asians are an important political presence. Politically, Asian Americans are a diverse group, but they have been moving toward the Democratic Party during the last decade.
E. Women versus Men. The gender gap (voting pattern differences among men and women) best exemplifies American gender issues. Women tend to vote Democratic, whereas men tend to vote Republican. Yet this does not mean that all women tend to vote more liberally than men, because among women of different ages there are voting differences as well. Another key development in women’s participation is the growing number of women running for and obtaining political office.
F. Religious Identity and Politics. For some people, religious groups provide an organizational participation infrastructure. For example, black churches and Jewish groups help transport citizens to the polls to protect the interests of the people they represent. Religious values have shaped American politics. For example, school prayer and abortion issues brought policy decisions redefining religion’s role in public life. The decisions made on these issues resulted in the mobilization of religious organizations and other groups aiming to reintroduce morality into public life. The mobilization of white evangelical Protestants into alignment with the Republican party helped elect different public officials. In 1980, 80 percent of evangelical Christian voters case their ballots for Ronald Reagan. In 1994, the Christian Coalition was credited with helping to elect the Republican majority Congress. Although former president George W. Bush was closely aligned with religious conservatives to support his elections and administrative decisions, they were not as thrilled with the choice of John McCain as the Republican candidate for president in 2008 because of the views he expressed during the 2000 primaries when he had previously run for president.
G. Age and Participation. One of the most significant political participation patterns is the age divide. Older people have much higher participation rates than young people. One reason that younger people turn out to vote less is that political campaigns rarely target young voters. Political campaigns target older voters because the elderly are better organized to participate than young people. Active mobilization has increased the youth vote in every election since 2000. Although young people have been politically disengaged at the polls, they have a strong record in community service because they feel this is the best way to deal with national problems. In contrast, they view politics and politicians with cynicism, pointing to a future of political disengagement.
III. Explaining Political Participation. Participation is higher among those with more education and money. To understand these patterns, it is essential to ask, “Why do people participate in politics?”
A. Socioeconomic Status. Individual characters explain participation levels. Survey results show that Americans with higher socioeconomic status participate much more in politics than those with lower socioeconomic status. Other factors playing a role in participation include ethnicity, race, and age. Present education levels are higher than in the past, but participation has declined, not increased. This puzzle indicates that political participation over time is determined by more than just the characteristics of individuals.
B. Civic Engagement. Civic Engagement is the sense of concern among members of the political community about public, social, and political life, expressed through participation in social and political organizations. Social settings affect political participation. Participation depends on three elements: resources (time, money, and know how), civic engagement (Are you concerned about public issues, and do you feel you can make a difference?), and recruitment (Are you asked to participate by someone you know?). Whether people have resources, feel engaged, are recruited depends on their social settings – family, friends, church, and other associations. Americans have a tendency to form local associations to address common problems. However, recently Americans’ membership in associations has been declining. Their social trust is also declining, and they are pulling back from public engagement. This decline in civic engagement can be explained by the rise in TV and the electronic media, by crime’s reduction of social trust, and by the effects of generational experience. Still, the political system settings also play an important role in public participation. Those settings can induce or prevent participation.
C. Formal Obstacles. Formal obstacles can greatly decrease participation. As mentioned previously, the poll tax, white primaries, and other measures deprived minorities and the poor of their right to vote. Other important political factors reducing voter turnout are registration and voting requirements. Most American states require citizens to register well in advance prior to the election. Elections are held on working days. Also, served, a felony sentence place a legal obstacle on participation. Americans’ lack of political involvement differs from the situation in European countries, where voter turnout is much higher. New methods to increase participation have been implemented with only modest success, suggesting that people need to be motivated to vote even after barriers are removed.
D. Political Mobilization. The process by which large numbers of people are organized for a political activity is called political mobilization. The most significant factor affecting participation is whether people are mobilized by parties, candidates, interest groups, and social movements. Half the dropoff in American participation can be attributed to reduced mobilization efforts. People are much more likely to participate when someone – especially someone they know – asks them to get involved. Face to face or person to person interaction with a candidate or a canvasser greatly increases voter turnout. In the past, political parties, organizations, and social movements relied on personal contact to mobilize voters. Recently, our political institutions (organizations that connect people to politics, such as a political party or a governmental organization, such as the Congress or the courts) have ceased to mobilize an active citizenry. Rather than mobilizers of people, political parties and interest groups became essentially fundraising and advertising organizations. Their connections to citizens seem to extend no further than citizens’ checkbooks. Nevertheless, in recent elections candidates have begun to reemphasize direct voter mobilization techniques. These techniques include door to door mobilization, getting voters to the polls, and Internet mobilization. Still, it is too soon to tell if these efforts to energize voters will overcome the socioeconomic bias in mobilizing citizens. Although these initiatives are significant, they coexist with demobilizing features of political life, such as negative advertising.
Part 2 – Elections
1. Elections in America. American elections are held at regular intervals. Presidential elections are held on the first Tuesday in November every four years. Congressional elections are held on the same day every two years, some being midterm elections (congressional elections not coinciding with presidential elections, also called off year elections). State and local elections may or may not coincide with national elections. States and local governments organize elections. They determine election administration, electoral district boundaries, and candidate and voter qualifications.
A. Types of Elections. In the United States, elections include primary, general, and runoff elections. Americans sometimes vote for referenda or ballot initiatives, but these are not technically elections.
1. Primary elections: These elections are used to select a party’s candidates for the general elections. Primary election winners face each other in the general election. Presidential primaries are indirect; only delegates to the nomination convention are chosen, and they choose the presidential candidates. Under state laws, primaries can be as follows:
a. Closed primary: a primary election in which voters can participate in the nominations of candidates, but only of the party in which they are enrolled for a period of time prior to primary day.
b. Open primary: a primary election in which the voter can wait until the day of the primary to choose which party to enroll in to select candidates for the general election.
2. General Election: the primary is followed by the general election. The winner of the general election is elected to the office for a specified term. Some states also provide the following voting opportunities:
a. Referendum: the practice of referring a measure proposed laws or actions.
b. Recall: procedure that allows voters the opportunity to remove a elected state official from office before his or her term expires.
B. The Criteria of Winning. There are different electoral systems and winning methods.
1. Majority system: a type of electoral system in which, to win a seat in the parliament or other representative body, a candidate must receive a majority of all the votes cast in the relevant district. In the United States during primaries to win the party’s representation, the candidate must receive 50 percent plus one of all the votes cast.
2. Plurality system: a type of electoral system in which, to win a legislative seat, a candidate need only receive the most votes in the election, not necessarily a majority of the votes cast. In virtually all American elections the plurality system in used – a candidate receiving 50, 30, or 20 percent of the vote wins if not other candidate received more.
3. Proportional representation: a multiple member district system that allows each political party representation in proportion to its percentage of the total vote. In European elections, a party is awarded legislative seats in proportion to the amount of votes the party won. In general, proportional representation works to the advantage of smaller or weaker groups in society, whereas plurality and majority rules tend to help larger and more powerful forces.
C. Electoral Districts. The states redraw their congressional and state legislative district boundaries every ten years to reflect population changes or to respond to legal challenges. This process is called redistricting or the redrawing of election districts and redistribution of legislative representatives. The Supreme Court has ruled that districts must include roughly equal populations to uphold “one person, one vote.” However, the legislators often seek to influence total outcomes by manipulating organization of electoral districts to their advantage. This is called gerrymandering (apportionment of voters in districts in such ways as to create districts made up primary disadvantaged or underrepresented minorities. Court decisions have undermined such majority-minority districts (a gerrymandered voting district that improves the chances of minority candidates by Supreme Court has generally rejected majority-minority districts, however, holding that districting based exclusively on racial criteria is unlawful.
D. The Ballot. In the past, the ballots cast were straight party votes. Today, a neutral ballot allowing for choice is used, and it is administered by the states rather than by the party. This gave rise to split ticket voting, or the practice of casting ballots for the candidates of at least two different political parties in the same election. On the other hand, straight ticket voting is the practice of casting ballots for candidates of only one party. Straight-ticket voting can often produce a coattail effect in which voters casting their ballot for president or governor “automatically” vote for the rest of that party’s candidates. Actual ballots vary from paper to mechanical, punch card, and electronic or computerized systems.
E. Electoral College: The electoral college is made up of the presidential electors from each state, who meet after the popular election to cast ballots for president and vice president. This is a product of indirect elections, where voters choose an intermediate body to select public officials. On Election Day, American voters do not vote directly for their president. Instead, they choose electors selected by the state’s party to support and cast their vote for the party’s presidential candidate (except in Maine and Nebraska, where one electoral vote goes to the winner in each congressional district and two electoral votes go to the winner statewide). There are 538 electoral votes. Electors can cast their vote for the other party’s candidate but in all save three occasions these votes have ratified the national popular vote. Electors cast their vote in the state’s capital and then send them to Congress, which then formally announces the winner. If there is no majority winner, then the three top candidates are submitted to the House, which each state gets one vote to pick the winner.
Point 2. Election Campaigns. Campaigns are efforts made by political candidates and their staffs to win the backing of donors, political activists, and voters in the quest for political office. Campaigns precede primary and general elections. Campaigns consist of a number of steps, including first organizing groups to raise funds and gain media attention. This is easy for current office holders, the incumbents running for positions that they already hold.
A. Advisers. The next step is to create a formal campaign organization. Candidates need a campaign manager, a media consultant, a pollster, a financial adviser, a press spokesperson, and a staff director to coordinate volunteer and paid activities. Professional campaign workers prefer to work with candidates who seem likely to win. These advisers must begin work early with candidates to start serious fund raising efforts, which increase the likelihood of winning.
B. Polling. To win, a candidate must collect voting and poll data to assess the electorate’s needs, hopes, fears, and past behavior. Polls help candidates and staff to formulate a campaign strategy. Pollsters have become central figures in most national campaigns, and some continue to advise their clients after they win an election.
C. The Primaries. For many candidates, the next step is the primary election. In this election the candidates will receive the major parties’ official nominations. Independent candidates can also run, but they must amass thousands of petition signatures to qualify for the general election. There are two primary contest types: the personality clash and the ideological or factional struggle. The first type occurs when ambitious individuals compete to secure election. The second type occurs when one wing or faction of a party decides that it is not willing to compromise its principles for the sake of the party’s electoral success. This can cause friction within party factions and undermine their chances in the general election.
Point 3. Presidential Elections. The major party presidential nominations follow a pattern this is quite different from the nominating process for other political offices. The presidential nominating process includes primary elections, but these are different from those for other political offices. In some years, especially when an incumbent president is running for re-election, one party’s nomination may not even be contested. In contested races, candidates typically compete in primaries or caucuses in all fifty states, attempting to capture national convention delegates. Most states use presidential primaries to choose delegates for national conventions. A few states use the caucus, a normally closed meeting of a political or legislative group to select candidates, plan strategy, or make decisions regarding legislative matters. Caucuses can vary as follows:
Open Caucus: presidential nominating caucus open to anyone who wishes to attend.
Closed Caucus: presidential nominating caucus open only to registered party members. Primaries and caucuses begin in February and end in June of an election year. The Democratic Party requires that states allow primaries on the basis of proportional representation. The Republicans do not require proportional representation, but many states have this requirement as part of their laws. However, other states use the winner take all system, the system in which all of the state’s presidential nominating delegates are awarded to the candidate who wins the most votes, while runners up receive no delegates. Traditionally, early primaries and caucuses are particularly important to the presidential nomination process, although 2008 was a notable exception.
A. The Convention. A national party convention is held to choose the nomination for president. The Republican and Democratic conventions take place every four years to certify their presidential nominees. In addition, these conventions draft the platform, a party’s document. The platform is written at a national convention and contains the party’s philosophy, principles, and positions on the issues that will govern party activity for the next four years.
1. The History of Political Conventions. For more than fifty years after the founding, presidential nominations were controlled by each party’s congressional caucus. However in the 1830s, because of criticism of “King Caucus,” the party convention was devised to allow fore more participation in the nomination process. As it developed, the convention became a decisive institution for bringing party factions to agreement. Initially, the convention was seen as democratic reform promoting presidential independence, because it took the nomination process out of congressional hands. In later years, however, the convention became associated with rule by party leaders and associated with party machines and patronage.
2. Contemporary Party Conventions. Traditional party conventions were deliberative assemblies, but contemporary conventions act more to ratify than to determine presidential nominations. Today, nominations are determined in primary elections and local party caucuses, which determine how each state’s convention delegates will vote. Although conventions no longer determine nominations, they have important tasks. The first is the adoption of party rules on convention delegate selection and future presidential primary elections. Another important convention task is the drafting of the party’s platform.
3. Convention Delegates. Today, delegates are strong political activists selected to vote at a party’s national convention. Republican delegates tend to be more conservative than Republican voters, whereas Democratic delegates tend to be more liberal than Democratic voters. Democratic delegations are required by party rules to be representative of the state’s electorate in terms of race, gender, and age. Republican delegates are more likely to be male and white. The Democrats also reserve slots for the superdelegates, elected party officials.
4. Convention Procedure. Conventions last several days. Party committees such as the credentials and platform committees and a convention chairperson are selected. Speeches are made on behalf of the nominees. Nomination speeches are carefully scrutinized by the mass media. After the nominations have been settled and voted on, the presidential and vice presidential nominees deliver acceptance speeches.
B. The General Election Campaign and High Tech Politics. After the nominations come the general elections. There are two types. The first type is the organizationally driven, labor-intensive election (local and congressional elections). The other type, the media-driven, capital- intensive campaigns, includes statewide campaign and congressional and presidential races. Today, political campaigns rely less on armies of workers and more on “air power,” or communications techniques as opposed to campaign workers. The six techniques that are especially important include the following:
1. Polling. Voter opinion surveys provide the information that candidates and their staff sue to shape their campaigns.
2. Broadcast media. Extensive use of the media, TV in particular, is the modern campaign’s hallmark. Candidates, especially incumbents, try to secure as much positive free news coverage as possible. In addition, they spend millions of dollars for paid media time. Many of these paid commercials consist of thirty to sixty second spot advertisements that permit a candidate’s message to be delivered to a large audience. The 1992 campaign introduced two media techniques: the talk show interview and the “electronic town hall meeting.” The first permitted candidates to reach large populations and allowed audience members to telephone with questions. The town meeting format allowed the candidates to interact with ordinary citizens in auditoriums and allowed candidates to deliver messages without the presence of journalists or commentators.
3. Phone Banks. Phone banks allow campaign workers to make personal contact with thousand of voters. Polling data identify the groups that will be targeted for phone calls, including those previously identified as uncommitted or weakly committed.
4. Direct mail. Direct mail communicates with the voters and raises funds.
5. Professional Public Relations. Modern campaigns are directed by professional public relations consultants. They offer candidates the expertise necessary to conduct accurate polls, television ads, direct mail campaigns, and computer analyses.
6. The Internet. The Internet has become a major weapon in modern political campaigns. Campaigns use Web pages to provide candidate information, raise funds, mobilize supporters, and get out the vote.
C. Campaigns and Political Equality: From Labor-Intensive to Capital-Intensive Politics. New political technology, including computers, electronic communications, and polls, has altered campaigning. The tasks that were once performed by masses of party workers and some cash are now done by fewer workers but with a great deal more money.
Point 4. How Voters Decide. The ultimate decision is made by the voters. There are three factors that influence voters’ decisions at the polls: partisan loyalty, issue and policy concerns, and candidate characteristics.
A. Partisan Loyalty. Most voters with a major political party. This partisan identification predisposes many voters in favor of their party’s candidates and against those of the opposing parties. At the level of presidential races, issues, and candidate personalities may become very important. Partisanship is more likely to assert itself in the less visible races, in which less is known about the candidates.
B. Issues. Most voters tend to cast their votes for those candidates they perceive as sharing their outlook on economic policy, foreign policy, or social or moral issues. However, this voter awareness is diluted when candidates do not differ substantially or do not take clear positions on policies or issues. Voting on issues involves a mixture of the voter’s judgment about the party’s past behavior and hopes and fears about the party’s future behaviors. There are two types of voting behavior. The first is prospective voting, or voting based on the imagined future performance of a candidate or a party. The second is retrospective voting, or voting based on the past performance of a candidate or party.
C. The Economy. The condition of the economy affects voters’ behavior at the polls. If the economic prospects are positive, voters favor the party in power. However, if voters are uneasy about the economy, then they favor the opposition.
D. Candidate Characteristics. A candidate’s personal attributes always influence voters’ decisions. The most important characteristics affecting voters are race, ethnicity, religion, gender, region, and social background. Voters also pay attention to their personality characteristics, such as decisiveness, honesty, and vigor.
Point 5. The 2008 and 2010 Elections. Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election with 365 electoral votes to Republican candidate John McCain’s 173.
A. The 2008 Primaries. Despite suspicions on the right about the conservative credentials of John McCain, he was able to starve off a challenge from evangelical preacher and former Arkansas governor Mike Hukabee.
B. Clinton vs. Obama. In an historic turn of events, the United States had for the first time a viable female and African American candidate for president battling it out in closely contested Democratic primaries and caucuses. In the end, Obama won out with 1,763 pledged delegates to Clinton’s 1,640. Since the majority of Democratic “superdelegates” and pledged their support to Obama going into the convention. Clinton withdrew her candidacy and threw her support behind Obama.
C. The General Election: Obama selected Senator Joe Biden from Delaware as his running mate in the hopes that Biden’s working class roots would appeal to middle class voters in important battleground states. McCain selected then Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, a relative unknown. After Palin delivered an impressive convention speech, it looked as if the McCain ticket might experience a prolonged resurgence in the polls. However, the McCain campaign struggled under the weight of a fund raising gap with the Obama campaign.
D. The Debates: Although McCain was the more seasoned legislator, Obama established himself during the three televised debates as an eloquent and thoughtful debater, capable of assuming the role of president.
E. Obama’s Victory: Although fears were raised over the so called Bradley effect in polling (the phenomena of white voters telling pollsters they would vote for a black candidate when they intended to vote for the white candidate), the lead that Obama carried in national polls going into the general election carried over to his victory in November 2008. The faltering economy and unpopular war in Iraq proved too difficult for McCain and Palin to overcome.
F. The 2010 Elections: Discontent over the slow pace of the economic recovery and continued high unemployment led the Republicans to retake the House and add considerably to their numbers in the Senate. The self described “Tea Party” movement proved an important force in Republican resurgence. Time will tell how easily the demands of limited government Tea Partiers can be reconciled with Republican leaders in the House.
Point 6. Money and Politics. Modern national political campaigns are fueled by enormous amounts of money. In a national race, millions of dollars are spent on media time, on public opinion polls, and on media consultants.
A. Sources of Campaign Funds. In 2008, candidates for federal office raised and spent approximately $3 billion. Roughly $300 million came from political action committees (PACs, private groups that raise and distribute funds for use in election campaigns), and the remainder came from individual donors.
1. Individual Donors. Politicians spent a great deal of time asking people for money. Many contributed greatly, not only as donors but also as fundraisers. They donated via candidate contributions, PACs, and party committees.
2. Political Action Committees (PACs). These organizations are established by corporations, labor unions, or interest groups to channel member contributions into political campaigns. By law, they can make larger campaign contributions than individuals can.
3. The Candidates. By law, individuals have the right to spend their own money to campaign for office. Therefore, wealthy individuals often contribute millions to their own campaigns.
4. Independent 527 Committees and 501c(4)s. 527 and 501c(4)s can raise and spend unlimited amounts on political advocacy so long as their efforts are not coordinated with those of any candidate’s campaign.
5. Political Parties. Before 2002, campaign dollars took the form of soft money (money contributed directly to political parties for voter registration and organization). To circumvent campaign money regulation, national parties forwarded much of the money they raised to disguised advertising and campaigning that stopped short of urging citizens to vote for or against a candidate. The 2002 federal campaign legislation crafted by Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold sought to ban soft money. The law diminished political parties’ campaign roles, but it did not reduce the importance of money in politics.
6. Public Funding. The Federal Elections Campaign Act (FECA) provides for public funding of presidential campaigns. As they seek the presidential nomination, candidates are eligible for dollar to dollar matching public funding by raising at least $5,000 in individual contributions of $250 or less. Candidates who do not accept public funding are not bound by expenditure limits and can therefore spend more. In recent years, most candidates have opted to fund their own campaigns.
B. Implications for Democracy. The important role played by private fund in the United States affects the balance of power among contending social groups. Politicians need large sums of money to campaign successfully. This fact inevitably ties their interests to the interests of the groups and forces that provide this campaign money. In the United States, these contributors come from business groups, labor groups, environmental groups, and prochoice and prolife forces. Interests that donate large sums expect and often receive favorable treatment from the beneficiaries of their largesse. Not all American interests play a role in political campaign finance. Only those with a great deal of money do, thus not reflecting the diversity of American society. The poor, the disadvantaged, and the destitute also have an interest in political campaign outcomes, but who is to speak for them?
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