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Example research essay topic: Campaign Finance Reform Taking Into Account - 2,747 words

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U. S, Congress has Not Solved the Problem of Campaign Finance Reform Corruption has always influenced politics greatly. It is as old as the country, thats why it has past as well as future. As long as money is used in political elections, corruption is sure to be. But in politics the only thing that of great importance is money.

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt spoke about prohibition of contributions to federal candidates which were made by corporations. A year later, in 1907, Congress passed the Tillman Act. According to the Act, it shall be unlawful for any national bank, or any corporation organized by authority of any laws of Congress, to make a money contribution in connection with any election to any political office. So, it was the first attempt to provide fair elections.

In the book The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why, the author Elizabeth Drew examined twenty-five years of American politics. She starts with the Watergate scandal and then analyzes the role of big money in the legislative process; how big money influence congressional behavior. The author emphases the negative impact of vicious politics on American faith in the fair political system. And it is really so. Facts prove this. For example, in 1964, 76 percent of Americans trusted the government in Washington.

They were sure that it was right most of the time. But as it was pointed in the book, by 1996, the number had changed to 19 percent. So, it was clear that the problem concerning corruption in the electoral process (dirty tricks, vote fraud, and mass-media spin) should be solved as soon as possible; and most of them corruption in Congress: the abuse of privileges, bad campaign finance system that allows to promote candidates from special interests groups. Campaign finance reform is the common term for the political effort in the United States to change the involvement of money in politics, primarily in political campaigns.

Although attempts to regulate campaign finance by legislation date back to 1867, the first successful attempts nationally to regulate and enforce campaign finance originated in the 1970 s. The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 required candidates to disclose sources of campaign contributions and campaign expenditure. It was amended in 1974 with the introduction of legal limits on contributions, and a provision created the Federal Election Commission (FEC). On March 27, 2002, The Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act (BCRA) was signed into law. The Act is also known as the McCain-Feingold Act. The last was created by Senators John McCain (Republican of Arizona) and Russ Feingold (Democrat of Wisconsin) with the purpose to regulate the financing of political campaigns.

The political reform must help to restore the public's faith in politics. The McCain-Feingold Act was created to reorganize campaign practices during the federal elections of 1996, involving the presidential race. The main goal of the McCain-Feingold Act was to exclude soft money -- contributions that are made to political parties and political action committees. They gave an opportunity to big donors to get round federal limits on direct contributions to candidates. Most of all, the McCain-Feingold Act gave more power to federal laws, because it should prohibit foreign nationals to make any contributions in federal, state and local elections. Also according to the Act, interest groups had to notify the Federal Election Commission if they had spent $ 10, 000 or more in an independent expenditure, primarily television ads.

But, in spite of a lot of advantages, the law had several disadvantages and met strong opposition from politicians and media entities. They said that it was an attempt to limit or control free speech. By the way, the law's critics had argued that though it limited on advertising by interest groups but at the same time the Law regulated activity not necessarily connected with elections. In particular, critics pointed that campaign contributions were a form of constitutionally protected political participation. So, most of all, the law violated the constitutional rights of voters. The McCain-Feingold Act made amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA).

Those acts were designed to purge national politics of what [is] conceived to be the pernicious influence of big money campaign contributions. In the early 1960 s, John F. Kennedy was running for president. From that time the Kennedy era in American politics began. It was unusual elections because though Kennedy had a lot of proponents, there were many opponents. The opponents insisted that the elections could not be fair because Kennedy had a great advantage his family was very wealthy.

Thats why the candidate was able to use much of his wealth in the campaign. Most of all, taking into account the rising cost of elections and that the influence of money became more evident, an election reform movement began. It examined the ways that money was raised and spent in elections. In 1971, Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). The Federal Election Campaign Act limited the amount of money that federal candidates were permitted personally contributes to their election campaigns. Then the law pointed limitation on what could be spent on media advertising.

The Act required candidates to report back to the public about their campaign contributions and expenditures. FECA went into effect on April 7, 1972. Having known about future changes (that there would no longer be an opportunity for undisclosed secret fundraising) some candidates began to make attempts to raise large sums of money before the new law went into effect. It provoked the Watergate scandal. The legislation was wide-ranging, attempting to consolidate previous reforms and also enacting a variety of new measures, including the first steps towards public financing of presidential campaigns. Enforcement remained a challenge, though, thanks in part to the lack of a central agency for monitoring compliance.

Public outrage at the Watergate scandal resulted in amendments to FECA which finally resulted in further changes in campaign finance law. New provisions included new, stricter and more comprehensive contribution and expenditure limits for campaigns and other committees, full public financing for presidential general election campaigns. Former President Richard Nixon was among those who engaged in the eleventh-hour fundraising. The total amount of unreported contributions came to some $ 60. 2 million. The main amount of unreported money was raised in the last forty-eight hours before the deadline. Later, in 1974, several amendments were passed to the FECA.

They limited the amount of dollars that individuals could contribute to candidates and political committees. The amendments also restricted candidates spending in federal elections. At last, the amendments designed a system for disclosure requirements. The same year the Federal Election Commission (FEC) was created. The Federal Election Commission was designed with the purpose to ensure that all candidates agreed with the new record keeping and disclosure rules. Those rules and requirements should be applied only to so-called hard money contributions.

Those are contributions that were made for the purpose to influence an election for federal office. But political parties and candidates tried to get round Feca's limitations by contributing soft money. Soft money is money that was unregulated under FECA and could be used for activities intended to influence state or local elections. The activities where candidates could use soft money were for mixed-purpose activities such as get-out-the-vote (GOTV) drives and generic party advertising, and for legislative advocacy advertisements. In those advertisements a federal candidates name could be mentioned. And most of all, the advertisement could be in use as long as it did not expressly advocate the candidates election or defeat.

Taking into account the difference between hard and soft money, it is easy to prove that parties and candidates circumvented FECA. They used issue ads that, for sure, affected election results. Later, in 1998, in Senate Committee Report, it was pointed that investigations into the 1996 federal elections brought negative after-effect on the campaign finance system. So called soft-money were a loophole that helped to get round the law. It was said that it is necessary to design a soft-money ban. The misuse of information had led to the manipulation of issues and gave an opportunity for a candidate from one Coalition to win over another candidate.

Elizabeth Drew in her book analyzed the 1996 elections and emphasized that, ''The idea that the Coalition didn't prefer particular candidates was a fiction. It had a clear preference in most of the competitive races; the voter guides left no doubt as to the preferred candidate. The guides have been found to vary from district to district or state to state in the issues they raised, enabling preferred candidates to get high scores. '' After series of decisions the Supreme Court passed Campaign Finance Reform. It was pointed that the goal of the law was to protect the public from the threat and the appearance of corruption in politics. Elizabeth Drew wrote about the reform, In 1996 the campaign finance system put in place following the Watergate scandals has been washed away. Though still on the books, campaign finance laws have been replaced by the law of the jungle.

But the law could not help to abolish unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. All of these changes have faced criticism. Among the most common charges are unintended consequences, the propagation of extremely complicated instructions, and the discouraging of political giving. Most of all there are many different threads within the reform community. These are not always in agreement. Most opponents are sure that Campaign Finance Reform violates on free speech and the First Amendment rights.

They argue that the purpose of the free speech clause of the First Amendment is to guarantee the right to publish peoples political views. But the laws prohibit people from advocating for or against political candidates by restricting the content of political advertising. In a commercial society means required for division of labor is supplied by money. The publisher pays the author for the right to sell his book; he wants to have payments from booksellers who bring the book to market. This presents opportunities for repression.

Opponents of the reform argued that the government should suppress their ability to coordinate by regulating their use of money; instead of regulating the various parties to the enterprise individually. The right to speak is considered to be ineffective if there is no right to be engaged in financial transactions. May be, the problem isn't the abuse of power as it is the power to abuse. There is a firm public opinion that the federal government can pick our pockets for the benefit of the powerful; and such situation provoke criminal minds to seek the power at any cost. There are some points of view that the solution is not limited speech, but rather limited government. Most of all it should be pointed that any regulation of money is a regulation of speech.

It was pointed that the government has decided to apply general commercial regulations to those who use money for speech because it does the same for those who use money for other purposes. But if the government singles out money used to fund speech as its legislative object, it will act against speech. The Campaign Finance Reform bill is as obviously unconstitutional as a law can be. The decision of the Congress, President, and Supreme Court to forbid the advertising of political views during elections is shocking. Congress has worked toward a corruption-free democracy by enacting an assortment of regulations to prevent this undue influence from sabotaging or diminishing the political process.

Beginning in 1976, the Court restricted this power based upon First Amendment concerns. When government regulations trespass protected First Amendment rights, they can only be upheld by meeting the governmental interest in preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. Campaign finance and its real or imagined corruption are symptoms of a government with the power to do just about anything. People want that power to be used for their benefit and are willing to pay large sums of money to make it happen.

Campaign finance reform, as currently debated, does not address the problem of excessive government power, but is only an attempt to treat the symptom of supposed corruption in the finance process. It can be considered a useless attempt, unless the government bans campaigning altogether. All main campaign finance laws were full of loopholes. One of them is limiting the ability of individuals to contribute. The Supreme Court upheld it despite its flagrant abridgement of free speech, even though the court conceded that it would not achieve its intended purpose.

May be a more effective and constitutional method of removing corruption in politics is to inform voters about people who are or appear to be corrupt. Without the power to tilt the playing field in favor of the highest bidder, fewer people will be willing to spend the amount of money that is currently being spent to influence the government through the election process. So, may be, there are simply lack the will, or the power to fight against a corrupt system? Computer technology makes it possible to have a hierarchical voting. The voter could vote for his / her first choice. Processing involves abolishing the lowest vote-getter, applying the alternate votes to the other candidates, until a candidate has a majority.

This has the virtue of allowing voters to choose what they really want, eliminating the "wasted vote" argument. In 2000, McCain had made campaign finance a centerpiece of his presidential race. But he lost the nomination to George W. Bush. McCain gathered new momentum for the legislation. During the 2000 presidential election, the public was interested in Governor Bush's attitude towards his rivals, John McCain, Campaign Finance Reform.

The reform became the basis for the eventual McCain-Feingold bill. At the time, the media argued about McCain's campaign issue for its promise to clean up "dirty campaigning" and prevent the "buying of political influence" by individuals and special interest groups. McCain's bill passed the House and the Senate, but it became law when signed by President Bush. With the 2004 elections the first campaign season started that was operated under the new rules, the impact of McCain-Feingold bill is just being felt.

A bill reforming campaign financing that was approved by the U. S. Senate. Critics, and even some supporters of such reform, called the legislation's ban on some advocacy-group advertising a violation of the First Amendment (Amendment I). Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Many opponents have charged that changes to campaign finance laws can produce unintended harmful consequences.

For example, many political scientists say that the rise of PACs helped hasten the weakening of political parties in the United States, as candidates grew more entrepreneurial in their fundraising and gained access to campaign finance outside of party channels; opponents have noted (and decried) this unexpected change which has resulted in unusually long periods of fundraising and proportionally less time for campaigning. Another example is that disclosure requirements may lead individuals to avoid giving to challengers, and increase giving to incumbents, as individual large donors might wish to avoid angering the current office-holder. Other examples of unintended changes are common, and are used to justify avoiding major changes to campaign finance laws. Others argue that money can never be separated from political influence. Despite the passage of McCain Feingold, reformers continue to promote a large number of new reforms, including restrictions on independent citizens' groups, creation of a more powerful enforcement agency, and government (or "public") financing of campaigns.

There are several ways of instituting government financing. One method, generally called Clean Money, Clean Elections, gives each candidate who chooses a certain, set amount of money. In order to qualify for this money, the candidates must show a broad base of support by collecting a specified number of signatures and small contributions. Bibliography: Campaign Finance Reform. web Renew America Forum: Political free speech, January 4, 2004. Dewar, Helen.

McCain, Feingold & Co. Laugh Last, Washington Post, December 11, 2003. web Whittaker, Bryan. A Legislative Strategy Conditioned on Corruption. Indiana Law Journal, Vol. 79, 2004.

Benson, Adam. The Campaign Finance Reform Act. The Daily Utah Chronicle. January 14, 2003. Drew, Elizabeth. Corruption in American Politics.

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.


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Research essay sample on Campaign Finance Reform Taking Into Account

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