Subsidizing Democracy

Abstract

In the wake of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the case that allowed corporate and union spending in elections, many Americans despaired over the corrosive influence that private and often anonymous money can have on political platforms, campaigns, and outcomes at the federal and state level. In McComish v. Bennett (2011), the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the matching funds feature of so-called “Clean Elections” public financing laws, but there has been no strong challenge to the constitutionality of public funding as such. This book considers the impact of state-level public election financing on political campaigns through the eyes of candidates. The book is not only an effort to judge the effects of existing public election funding but also a study of elite behavior, campaign effects, and the structural factors that influence campaigns and voters. The book states that the presence of publicly funded candidates in elections results in broad changes to the electoral system, including more interaction between candidates and the voting public and significantly higher voter participation. The book provides evidence that by providing neophytes with resources that would have been unobtainable otherwise, subsidies effectively manufacture quality challengers. It describes how matching-funds provisions of Clean Elections laws were pervasively manipulated by candidates and parties and were ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court. The book concludes with an evaluation of existing proposals for future election policy.