Federal Election Commission Research Articles

The Potential Health Effects ofCitizens United

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court reached one of its most controversial decisions in years, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Lainie Rutkow and colleagues write that, with this decision, the Court has effectively opened the financial floodgates to give corporations unprecedented influence over the election of the people who determine health policy.

EMILY's List v. Federal Election Commission, 581 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2009)

<i>EMILY's List v. Federal Election Commission</i>, 581 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2009)

Polls and Elections: Hail to the Fundraiser in Chief: The Evolution of Presidential Fundraising Travel, 1977-2004

On June 21, 2001, President George W. Bush flew to Birmingham, Alabama, where he gave a speech at Oak Mountain State Park. He discussed his administration's support for environmental conservation programs, his efforts to pass what would become the No Child Left Behind Act, and the benefits of the recently passed tax cuts. During his speech, Bush declared, It's an honor to be traveling back to Alabama today with Jeff Sessions. I'm going to spend a little time this evening touting his cause. Indeed, that evening, Bush headlined a fundraiser for Senator Sessions at the Jefferson Convention Complex before boarding Air Force One and heading to his ranch in Crawford, Texas (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States 2001). A presidential journey such as this one has become a common occurrence. In recent years, presidents have devoted increasing amounts of their time, which is perhaps their scarcest resource, to the task of raising funds to advance their own political interests and those of their party. Many observers have decried this trend as part of what has been dubbed a permanent campaign for the presidency, in which little distinction now remains between campaigning and governing (Ornstein and Mann 2000). How do we empirically evaluate whether and to what extent the permanent campaign exists? If, following the logic that David Mayhew (1974) applies to members of Congress, we assume that presidents are single-minded seekers of reelection, strategic presidents as rational actors would work to accumulate the financial resources that would bolster both their own electoral fortunes and those of their co-partisans. Approaching politics with such a worldview, it would be natural for the president to act as the fundraiser in chief. This essay systematically examines the dynamics of presidential fundraising travel from 1977 to 2004 in order to test hypotheses about which factors are related to where presidents go to raise funds from their supporters, how fundraising travel fits into the larger picture of presidential travel, and the evolution of these dynamics over time. Much research on fundraising is based on data from the Federal Election Commission that detail contributions to candidates, political parties, and political action groups, and focuses on the effect of political contributions on the policy process. I have constructed a database of presidential travel and fundraising events to look at the other side of the coin--what do political actors, in this case presidents, do in search of political funds, and how does this relate to other patterns of presidential travel? What do these trends reveal about the evolving nature of the presidency? The next section of this study reviews relevant literature on the permanent campaign and presidential fundraising. I then discuss the data set built for this study and the hypotheses that structure the analysis, which then follows. The conclusion highlights the evolving nature of presidential fundraising, the factors that distinguish it from other presidential public activity, and the normative implications of this study. Presidential Fundraising and the Permanent Campaign This study builds on scholarship that has focused on both the concept of a permanent campaign and the dynamics of political fundraising. First, in spite of the conventional wisdom that presidents are actively concerned with their own electoral fortunes, research on the presidency rarely addresses campaigns, and the literature on campaigns rarely looks at what presidents do throughout their terms to advance their own reelection and that of their fellow party members. In one example, Samuel Kernell explained the decision to study travel trends only over a president's first three years in office by declaring that [t]o eliminate public activities inspired by concerns of reelection rather than governing, only the first three years have been tabulated (1997, 113). …

Economics Trumps Politics; Market Trumps Democracy: The US Supreme Court's Decision on Campaign Financing

In the appeal of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 2009, the US Supreme Court decided on 29 January in a vote of 5 : 4 to overturn the existing Bipartisan Campaign Reform (McCainFeingold) Act of 2002 (BCRA). The BCRA is a federal law that prohibits corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to make independent expenditures for speech that is an ‘electioneering communication’ or for speech that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a candidate. Citizens United (CU), a non-profit corporation, released a documentary that was critical of then Senator Hilary Clinton, a candidate for her party’s presidential nomination. Assuming that the documentary would run on cable television 30 days before the election, CU produced advertisements. Paragraph 441b of the BCRA defines an ‘electioneering communication’ as ‘any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication’ that ‘refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office’ and is made within 30 days of a primary election. CU, the appellant in the dispute, argued that the documentary was unconstitutional in terms of Paragraph 441b and to the reporting and disclosure requirements of the BCRA. CU sought an injunction on the grounds that the documentary was not an ‘electioneering communication’ because it was not publicly distributed. Perhaps, more importantly, CU held that the case could not be resolved on narrower grounds without chilling political speech, which runs counter to the First Amendment. The Court had to consider the continuing effect of the speech suppression upheld in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. This was the case in which the Supreme Court held that the Michigan Campaign Finance Act, which prohibited corporations from using treasury money to support or oppose candidates in elections, did not violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court upheld the restriction on corporate speech based on the notion that ‘[c]orporate wealth can unfairly influence elections’, and the Michigan law still allowed the corporation to make contributions from a segregated fund. The result of the Court’s decision was to overrule Austin. Chief Justice Roberts, with whom Justice Alito agreed, wrote: The Government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern. Its theory, if accepted, would empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations – as the major

Campaign Finance Regulation: The Resilence of the American Model

The current term of the United States Supreme Court, which began this past October, is notable for its concentration of cases testing the permissible scope of federal regulation of business. But if this term’s docket reflects the pressure faced by the American economic model – a model marked by lax regulation, faith in private choices and market outcomes, and toleration of large inequalities in results – then this term will likely also mark a reaffirmation of that model in the context of free expression. In September the Court held a rare off-schedule oral argument in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , a case that may result in significant changes in the constitutional status of American campaign finance law. Citizens United presents the Court’s emerging conservative majority with an opportunity to deregulate corporations’ campaign speech by finding restrictions on that speech to violate the First Amendment. Depending on the breadth of the Court’s holding, Citizens United may well result in the triumph of the American economic model in the context of the political marketplace exactly when that model is coming under severe strain on other fronts.

The Financing and Programming of Advocacy in Complex Nonprofit Structures

This article examines nonprofit environmental groups to demonstrate the impact of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Federal Election Commission (FEC) regulation on nonprofit organizations interested in advocacy work. This regulation encourages nonprofits interested in extended advocacy to form additional, related tax-exempt entities, creating complex nonprofit structures. Although regulatory barriers to charitable lobbying have received some attention, little has been written on how regulatory policy shapes the organizational structures, finances, and programming of nonprofits involved in advocacy. This study analyzes the complex structures of five environmental nonprofit groups using information they file with the IRS and FEC and interviews with key officers and representatives. It finds that even with strict regulatory compliance, financial and programmatic relationships across these complex structures can vary creating different types of complex nonprofit structures. The article models the different complex nonprofit structures and provides an analysis of the historical and legal risk factors that underlie them.

The Devil We Know? Evaluating the Federal Election Commission as Enforcer

The Devil We Know? Evaluating the Federal Election Commission as Enforcer

Considering the Meaning of Wisconsin Right to Life for the Corporate Free-Speech Movement

The test for determining the “functional equivalency of express advocacy” established by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2007 could well signal a propitious turning point for the corporate free-speech movement—efforts to develop First Amendment protection for corporate political media spending. The test creates the potential to undermine the doctrine the Supreme Court of the United States constructed in support of more than a century of legislative judgment seeking to wall off the corrupting force of such spending from candidate elections. This article assesses that potential through analysis of Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., in which the Chief Justice established that test. His test attracted sharp criticism from so many other justices that the case may offer less than clear guidance for lower courts on its rationale. But the fact that there can be no confusion as to its holding would seem to offer reason for optimism to corporate interests in similar cases.

Wheat from chaff: Third‐party monitoring and FEC enforcement actions

AbstractRegulatory theory suggests that providing agencies with multiple sanctioning options allows them to dispose promptly of less serious matters and thereby conserve resources to pursue serious offenders. However, agencies dependent on third‐party monitoring may have their enforcement agendas skewed toward more trivial violations. We consider these competing expectations by analyzing enforcement actions at the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) from 1999 to 2004. The FEC – an agency heavily dependent on third‐party monitoring – expanded its enforcement options in 2000 by creating two new programs to pursue low‐level offenders, while leaving its monitoring strategy unchanged. We hypothesized that more sanctioning options would allow the FEC to allocate its resources more efficiently, and thus deal more effectively with the skew created by third‐party monitoring. We found instead that although the FEC disposed more promptly of low‐level infractions, it was no more effective at focusing on serious violations. Our results suggest that for many agencies, expanding enforcement options without addressing monitoring has limited ability to resolve enforcement problems.

Commentary on Welch's Early and Important Work Separating Out the Effects of Constituency and Campaign Contributions on Congressional Roll-Call Votes

Writing mote than 20 years ago, W. P. Welch used a probit model to attempt to isolate the effect of campaign contributions on roll-call from other influences like the legislator's constituency, party, and ideology. The literature on the relationship between campaign contributions and legislative votes is extensive, with often-inconsistent findings. It is typically the case contributions from interested groups are correlated with roll-call favorable to the contributor's interests. Studies include a wider range of variables find this relationship is so simple. Interest groups contribute to members who are already often predisposed to support their position. If the group has a local presence, then members may be with the group because of constituency pressures. Party and ideology also must be factored into the analysis (Ansolabehere, Figueiredo, and Snyder 2003; Chin 2005; Roscoe and Jenkins 2005; Wawro 2001). Welch's (1982) article presents a conceptual framework in which to consider the of campaign contributions from an interested group votes by legislators on past or future legislation. Welch links this transaction to what he labels exchange theory. His framework includes assumptions were well grounded in the understanding of congressional elections and campaign finance at the time. His overall conclusion was although contributions are significant, they were the least important determinant of legislative voting (Welch 1982, 493). What other determinants were more important? He finds variables like dairy production (a measure of constituency interest), ideology, and party are all stronger predictors of the vote on milk price supports than campaign contributions. Welch's article is cited in sociology, economics, and political science journals. While this essay will explain its central argument about the relative influence of campaign contributions on roll-call votes and vice versa, it is also the case Welch is frequently cited in studies of legislative behavior, interest groups (especially agricultural groups), and, more broadly, about campaign finance. Context of Welch's Article The conventional wisdom that interest groups 'buy' influence by contributing to political motivates Welch's analysis (Welch 1982,487). At the time of publication, the issue of campaign contributions from interest groups had become more salient because of the Watergate investigation of a botched burglary of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C. The investigation had uncovered large illegal contributions to the Committee to Reelect the President (CREP) during the 1972 election cycle (Corrado and Mann et al. 1997,283). Watergate galvanized Congress to reform the way federal elections are financed. New regulations in the form of a set of 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) imposed contribution and spending limitations, mandated disclosure, and established an enforcement agency, the Federal Election Commission (FEC), to over see the new regulations. Welch indirectly mentions FECA in his opening paragraph when he states the public belief interest groups buy influence is a reason for Congress either publicly to finance congressional campaigns or to place a limit on the amount of monies a candidate may receive from political action committees (Welch 1982, 178). While Welch finds only modest independent effects campaign contributions, in his words not a major influence, he does find those who received contributions in the 1974 election cycle were more likely to vote higher milk-price supports in 1975. Similarly, those who voted with the milk producers in 1975 were more likely to receive contributions from the Dairy PAC during the 1976 election cycle. Consistent with what we know about legislative specialization and interest-group behavior, he finds contributions to the Agriculture Committee members were higher, other things being equal. …

CAMPAIGN DONATIONS TAKE BIPARTISAN SHIFT

U.S. CHEMICAL MANUFACTURERS haven’t exactly abandoned the Republican Party. But like many other donors in the business community, the industry is giving a much larger share of its political campaign contributions to Democratic candidates as the 2008 national elections approach Since 1990, companies that make chemicals and related products such as plastics, paints, and explosives have given three-quarters of their total donations to Republican candidates for federal office, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. CRP is a nonpartisan group that analyzes campaign finance records filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). So far in the two-year 2008 election cycle, however, the chemical manufacturing sector has delivered 62% of its campaign cash to Republicans, a considerable drop-off from 75% in the 2006 midterm elections and 77% in 2004, the last presidential election year. The driving force behind the change is the Democratic takeover of Congress after 12 years of Republican rule. Business...

Financing the 2008 Congressional Elections: A Prospective Guide

Every two years the financing of federal elections changes, sometimes subtly and other times more dramatically, sometimes necessarily in response to new rules and other times innovatively in response to old ones. This essay discusses changes in place or afoot for the 2008 congressional elections. In the coming cycle, the new congressional majority will enjoy a significant fundraising edge, social-welfare organizations will be more engaged in political interventions, unions and corporations will re-enter the pre-election advertising scene, and lobbyist contributions will come into the sunlight. Vacancies on the Federal Election Commission will likely stifle the creativity of candidates and campaign financiers, as innovations cannot be sanctioned until a quorum is available to approve advisory opinions. The non-profit education program of the IRS may also temper the anticipated rush to shift political activity to social-welfare organizations.

Is That a Bundle in Your Pocket, Or . . .?

As the 2008 Presidential campaign proceeds, calls for reform of bundling disclosure continue. Bundling permits individual funders to attract more attention from candidates by producing more funds than the contribution limit of $2,300 per election would permit. Advocates of greater regulation see bundling as an end-run around contribution limits and disclosure requirements of federal campaign finance law. Greater regulation of bundling could be the next step in the incremental but everlasting pursuit of political reform. Critics of bundling both inside and outside the Federal Election Commission (FEC) have called for additional regulations, especially in the disclosure of bundling. This essay looks at what bundling is and is not, what the law requires now, and why more regulation, even disclosure, may not be such a smart idea.

The Federal Election Commission: policy, politics, and administration

Chapter 1 List of Tables and Figures Chapter 2 Acknowledgments Chapter 3 Introduction Chapter 4 1. Democratic Theory and Models of Policy-Making Chapter 5 2. Political Knowledge & Policy Preferences Chapter 6 3. A Brief History of Campaign Finance Regulation Chapter 7 4. A Theoretical Overview of the FEC Chapter 8 5. The Federal Election Commission: An Overview Chapter 9 6. The Political-Administrative Relationship Chapter 10 7. An Analysis of the FEC-Political Relationship Chapter 11 8. Conclusion Chapter 12 Bibliography Chapter 13 Author Index Chapter 14 Subject Index

Look Who's Coming to Dinner

House congressional campaign committees (CCCs) have increasingly relied on incumbents for financial support during the past decade. To raise money for their party's CCC, incumbents can (a) contribute to the CCC through their own principal campaign committee and/or leadership PAC or (b) broker contributions from donors. The authors argue that direct incumbent contributions make available to the party campaign committee broader contribution networks than do brokered incumbent contributions. One observable implication of this thesis is that ties to D.C. lobbyists should be a more powerful predictor of brokered than of direct contributions to the CCCs. Comparing Federal Election Commission data on direct member contributions to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) with unique data on member ticket sales to the 2005 NRCC March Gala, the authors find strong support for this expectation. Soliciting direct contributions from incumbents appears to be a better means for the CCCs to gain access to new campaign money.

“Justifying Corporate Speech Regulation Through a Town-Meeting Understanding of the Marketplace of Ideas”

The debate between the majority and the dissenting justices in the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission refocused attention on one particularly intense dispute in First Amendment law that has been simmering among the Justices over the past quarter-century: corporate speech doctrine. Although the Court extended First Amendment protection to corporate political media spending in relation to referenda in 1978, subsequent cases have permitted regulation of such spending in order to prevent corruption of democratic processes in candidate elections. The Supreme Court's most recent case on corporate speech highlighted the potential for the Court to shift its jurisprudence back toward a laissez-faire doctrine that would more greatly advantage corporate participants in the marketplace of ideas and signaled the continuing relevance of scholarly and judicial debate on the subject. Dissenting justices have argued repeatedly that there is no basis in principle or in law why business corporations should be denied full First Amendment rights. This monograph argues that such a position contradicts a significant body of relevant case law, but more broadly how the reasoning that forms the constitutional basis for regulation of corporate political spending can compellingly be expressed through the procedural tenets of Alexander Meiklejohn's town-meeting model of the First Amendment. The monograph draws upon those tenets to advance a highly principled theory for considering corporate speech jurisprudence in a manner that most truly advances freedom of the political marketplace and democratic debate.

Polarized America: the dance of ideology and unequal riches

The idea of America as politically polarized--that there is an unbridgeable divide between right and left, red and blue states--has become a cliche. What commentators miss, however, is that increasing polarization in recent decades has been closely accompanied by fundamental social and economic changes--most notably, a parallel rise in income inequality. In Polarized America, Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal examine relationships of polarization, wealth disparity, immigration, and other forces, characterizing it as a dance of give and take and back and forth causality.Using NOMINATE (a quantitative procedure that, like interest group ratings, scores politicians on basis of their roll call voting records) to measure polarization in Congress and public opinion, census data and Federal Election Commission finance records to measure polarization among public, authors find that polarization and income inequality fell in tandem from 1913 to 1957 and rose together dramatically from 1977 on; they trace a parallel rise in immigration beginning in 1970s. They show that Republicans have moved right, away from redistributive policies that would reduce income inequality. Immigration, meanwhile, has facilitated move to right: non-citizens, a larger share of population and disproportionately poor, cannot vote; thus there is less political pressure from bottom for redistribution than there is from top against it. In the choreography of American politics inequality feeds directly into political polarization, and polarization in turn creates policies that further increase inequality.

The New campaign finance sourcebook

The New Campaign Finance Sourcebook has been integrated with the award-winning and frequently visited Brookings website to provide a timely, interactive tool for policymakers, journalists, and scholars. Four of the country's leading experts on campaign finance reform have contributed original essays on important facets of finance law and administration. The essays are accompanied by a list of corresponding documents available on the website. The book offers a thorough overview and analysis of this highly controversial issue, including the history of campaign finance regulation and the current state of the law, current practices and trends in the flow of money, the constitutional debate, the use of political party money, issue advocacy, public financing of presidential elections, implementing and enforcing campaign finance laws, and campaigning on the internet. The authors conclude with a broad overview of alternative approaches to reform. The related website (www.brookings.edu/campaignfinance) features sidebars that correspond to the book's chapters as well as associated documents. The site is frequently updated with recent developments in campaign finance regulation and analyses of current court cases and administrative decisions. There are also links to advisory opinions from the Federal Elections Commission, nonprofit organizations that study reform, and related publications-.

A Tale of Two Campaigns: Ralph Nader's Strategy in the 2004 Presidential Election

A Tale of Two Campaigns: Ralph Nader's Strategy in the 2004 Presidential Election

2004 Presidential Election: An Introduction

This special issue on the 2004 presidential election marks the second time that Presidential Studies Quarterly has devoted an issue to articles on the most recent election. This journal plans to make this a quadrennial tradition, recognizing the crucial importance of elections in the study of the presidency. Although scholars of the presidency naturally focus primarily on presidential actions, much of what presidents do is influenced by how they made it into the office. This issue covers some of the many aspects of who voted to reelect Bush and why. Whether one approves or disapproves of George W. Bush's politics, his controversial handling of the job has proved to be a boon to the study of the presidency. The Bush presidency has certainly stimulated more public interest in politics, as evidenced by public participation in the 2004 presidential election. The first two articles in this issue address two important aspects of this phenomenon. First, Alan Abramowitz and Walter Stone examine the increase in election turnout and political activism in 2004. They argue that the polarization over George W. Bush's presidency was largely responsible for the surge in public participation in electoral activities. Another aspect of participation in the election that increased markedly involved financial contributions to presidential campaigns. Costas Panagopoulos and Daniel Bergan compare 2000 and 2004 data from the Federal Election Commission and employ the National Election Studies to examine the types of people who contributed. After every presidential election, analysts want to know the makeup of the party coalitions and how patterns of voting behavior are changing. Harold Stanley and Richard Niemi examine the nature of group support for the parties in 2004 and put these recent data into historical perspective. Kate Kenski and Russell Tisinger focus specifically on Hispanic voters, a topic of special interest given that the Hispanic population of the U.S. citizenry is projected to increase substantially in the coming decades. Two articles in this issue are devoted to the topic of voting behavior by religious groupings. The 2004 election was the first since 1960 to have a member of the Catholic faith nominated by one of the two major parties for president. Mark Gray, Paul Perl, and Mary Bendyna examine the Catholic vote in 2004 and show how Catholicism was much less related to the vote than during the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960. …