Talk:Campaign finance in the United States

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I've created this article to draw together information that was scattered between Campaign finance reform and Federal Election Campaign Act (which included information about the current legal limits, not the legal limits under the Federal Election Campaign Act). I think I'll merge Soft money and Hard money (politics) too-they're too short to be separate articles, and anyways it's much better to put them in the context of campaign finance, rather than artifically be separated in different articles. Deus Ex 4 July 2005 11:37 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Major accuracy issues

This new article has several major factual flaws, which I'm even more concerned about because of Deus's unilateral decision to redirect several major articles here. I'm in a pinch for time at the moment, but just in a quick scan, I found the following major errors:

  • "Political parties do not directly fund their candidates' campaigns": In almost every seriously contested partisan race, candidates do receive significant direct contributions from party organizations. At the state level in particular, such funds often make up a very large percentage of a campaign's fundraising.
  • "Regulations were first placed on campaign finance in the 1970s": As detailed in the text you merged from campaign finance reform, there were various scattered efforts to regulate campaign financing before FECA, going back as early as 1867.
  • Minors are not prohibited from making campaign contributions -- that portion of BCRA was struck down by the Supreme Court

We also need to have a more extended conversation about how to organize these articles -- in particular, I think there's value in separating an article describing the current regulatory regime from an article describing the politics and history of campaign finance reform, and in retaining articles on individual pieces of legislation. But for right now, I simply can't let this article stand without a warning to readers that they cannot rely on much of the information here without further confirmation.

RadicalSubversiv E 5 July 2005 21:02 (UTC)

1. Sorry, I didn't realise the situtation at the state level was quite that different. "Political parties do not directly fund their candidates' campaigns" was supposed to mean "do not fund (entirely) their candidates campaigns". 2. Corrected: regulations>seriously enforced regulations. The pre-1971 regulations weren't widely enforced. 3. Deleted.

I merged soft money and hard money because they were pointless artifical separations from their context: campaign finance. Also, hard money was only two sentences, and soft money was confusing, since the first sentence didn't tell the reader national party committees could no longer spend soft money. So all in all, it wasn't worth updating/expanding these articles, so I merged them. I moved the information from Federal Election Campaign Act, because it was very confusing to the reader: it talked about the current legal limits to the campaigns, no the ones under FECA. Information about current legal limits shouldn't be in an article about a 1971/74 Act. So, seeing as the only article of any substance was Campaign finance reform, I combined that with the other articles, and reformated and added more up-to-date information. I'm not going to merge whole articles that are about legislation or organisations, merely articles that attempt to explain concepts and provide general information out of a coherent context, and are by themselves inadequate.

Yes, I did act "unilaterally", but that was because no-one else appears to be doing much work in American elections articles. I've created an Elections in the United States article, without anyone else contributing for example. Hopefully, there are people out there that also know about American elections, but if they aren't contributing anything, then acting unilaterally is inevitable. Deus Ex 5 July 2005 21:19 (UTC)

Hopefully, the accuracy dispute notice is now unnecessary, if the content I merged from Federal Election Campaign Act and Campaign finance reform is accurate. Very little of this article is new content. The only real new content is the introduction and the hard money/soft money section, which I partially re-wrote. Deus Ex 5 July 2005 21:44 (UTC)

1) is not only an issue at the state level. As the chart you've pulled from the FEC shows, national party committees can contribute up to $5,000 to Congressional candidates -- I don't recall whether that is for all national party committees, or whether each (e.g., the DNC and the DCCC) can contribute $5,000 apiece. In any case, I'll remove the accuracy dispute tag for now.
I continue to think that a separate campaign finance reform article is necessary to deal with that subject as a political issue (its history, the players, the arguments, etc.). It would have been good form to at least post a note on the talk page there before performing the move This article is definitely also needed -- to cover how the system works, esp. the current regulatory regime -- but it needs some work (esp. on the state vs. federal front), which I'll work on in the next few days. I hadn't seen the FECA article; if it was about the current regulatory regime, it should be rewritten to be about the history of the Act and its effects.
I'm a little more agnostic on the subject of separate articles on the technical terms, though it is standard practice in lots of other areas (finance and real estate come to mind) to feature stub articles on individual terms of some note.

RadicalSubversiv E 6 July 2005 03:10 (UTC)

Now the article size is approaching 32k perhaps you're right-a separate article for campaign finance reform. I'm inclined towards two articles: the first about the current regime and criticism. Below the "Current provisions of campaign finance laws" section there should be sections on funding for Presidential elections, Congressional elections and hopefully gubernatorial elections and state legislature elections too-although there are obviously big differences between individual states. There should be a summary of the history of campaign finance reform, with a main article: Campaign finance reform link. A second article should deal with the history of reform, and perhaps expand on the arguments on free speech v. corruption, say something about interest group support, incorporate the "Current proposals for reform" section. I can't say I see any reason on individual articles on soft money and hard money, when they can be covered better by a section on this article. Individuals articles for hard money & soft money might be necessary if they help the reader understand the ideas better, but in this case I don't think they would, they would just scatter information which logically should be in this article. Deus Ex 6 July 2005 10:22 (UTC)

After researching the term hard money on the keyword search tools from yahoo/overture it appears this article is directing the more general and broad term of "hard money" toward the political use of the term. The term hard money generated 5498 searches in July 2006. The term hard money lender actually exceeded the broader topic of just hard money with 7,939 searches. The term "hard money donation" brought nothing back. The term "political donation" brought back only 158 searches done in July 2006 on the Yahoo/overture key word research tool.

This seems to be an exceptionally well written article with excellent information on the important aspects of political donations and it would create interest in campaign finance reform,which is vitally important.

Despite the importance of the matter, it still misdirects the general reader to a specific usage of the term hard money which is not exclusive, nor most commonly used by the general public.

Most editors on Wikipedia might by nature of their interest in contributing to an encyclopedia, be somewhat more educated than the population at large. For that reason we must be careful not to omit or minimize relvant information to the general public.

Hard money is a specific type of loan offered to borrowers in financial distress. It is expensive and considered emergency financing. It by some considered tantamount to loan sharking - but never the less factually relevant. Loan Shark - would not and should not be directed to money used to buy a shark at a zoo. Similarly - hard money is predominantly used to describe non-conforming higher risk real estate finance given to borrowers at a higher than average rate of interest.

Because the topic is searched for by nearly one hundred thousand people a year, vs the approximate 2000 political donation, and none on hard money donation.. it would make sense for wiki-pedia to have a much more distinct header that refers to the various forms of hard money. Hard Money might be best under the header of Campaign Finance,with a reference to the prevelant popular use of hard money. TC 1:41 -


[edit] Sources

I've found some useful sources which can be used for this article, which should also resolved factual errors: Deus Ex 6 July 2005 01:34 (UTC)


[edit] Hard Money and Soft Money

I honestly can't figure out what this snippet of a sentence is trying to say: "...allowed party committees to accept and spend unlimited amounts of money during election campaigns to political parties for an activity..."

Spending money to political parties? What?

[edit] Split off Campaign Finance Reform

Half of this article is about campaign finance in the US and half about campaign finance reform. As the article is over the suggested length, what does everyone think about splitting up the two? Uriah923 19:32, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. They're separate topics. Meelar (talk) 19:40, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Small Change

Updated statement on California Proposition 89 to reflect post election results.

[edit] Independent Expenditures

This sentence seems to be missing something:

"An independent expenditure is an expenditure for a communication which FEC's Public Records Office or online at the FEC's web site."

Here's the relevant section of FEC site if someone wants to take a shot at it. Thanks. Sighrik 03:47, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Public financing for McCain

I'm pretty sure that McCain did not accept public financing for the primaries. This is all over the news, but here's one source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/20/politics/main3852212.shtml. The link that's currently in there shows that he did indeed qualify, but says nothing about him accepting it. I'm changing this, just thought I'd let everyone know.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.204.94.158 (talk) 21:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)