I vote Today stickers on a pile of American dollar bills, political election concept of economy and democratic elections in the USA.
With the 2024 election drawing ever closer, it once again brings into view our even changing and evolving democratic tradition. Looking back at our first elections, the only people who were allowed to vote were white, land-owning men. It has been a long and hard struggle to bring it to where we are today, and now we have the right to vote extended to all citizens regardless of ethnicity, gender, wealth, or sexual orientation. But despite all this, there are still problems which must be addressed with our current elections. One such issue is rules: or lack thereof, surrounding campaign finance.
Initial campaign finance was almost entirely funded by wealthy individuals who were running for office. The first evidence we see of campaign financing is when Andrew Jackson was running for president. He was not particularly wealthy, and so it was necessary in order to run his campaign. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, many different pieces of legislation were passed with the aim of limiting the influence of private business and unions on elections. It remained fairly stagnant, until the mid 20th century. Groups began to ‘party build’; donating to help a party, not a specific candidate. This could also be contributed to by companies and other organizations.
However, the largest of the deregulations occurred in 2010, when a supreme court ruling delivered a 5-4 verdict that Political Action Committees (henceforth referred to as ‘PACs’) could accept unlimited contributions from private businesses and organizations, giving birth to the super-PAC. These are often responsible for the lion’s share of the advertisements and other forms of media published during presidential elections. While they technically cannot be coordinated with the efforts of a specific candidate, they are often run by, or heavily influenced by, former members of political campaigns. This allows private for-profit entities to provide unlimited funding that will go directly toward benefiting a specific political candidate.
This raises the quite disturbing concern that our election can be unduly influenced by the actions of one company. While the impact of advertisements in voting and voter turnout are disputed, there is most certainly an impact, even if only a small one. But in the age of modern politics, margins are often razor thin, amplifying their effectiveness. In contrast, the money they make is anything but small. In 2024 alone, super-PACs have raised almost two and a half billion dollars in order to support political candidates. If represented as a GDP, that would place it higher than 20 other countries.
So how do we fix this? I personally am an advocate for a maximum which can be spent on a political campaign, including on advertisements, in support or opposition of candidates from super-PACs. Not being intimately familiar with the exact economics of campaigns, any speculation as to what would be an appropriate number would be pure speculation, so I will not make any assertions. Along with that, preventing private for-profit organizations from making political donations to PACs, thus diminishing the power which private business holds over the government. Not only would this make it so that business would have less say in who gets elected, but it would also make it easier to run as a third party candidate.
Since there is a maximum which could be spent, smaller candidates would be able to compete at similar levels as the large two party candidates. At the end of the day it is all of our responsibility to ensure that the democratic ideals which we have fought for over the past almost two and a half centuries are not tarnished by our actions now. We must continue to work tirelessly in order to ensure that these democratic ideals which lay at the heart of our nation will persist for many generations yet to come.