Talk:Campaign finance in the United States

[why I created this article]
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)

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 -

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?

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)

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

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)

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)

Public financing for Obama
Isn't it true that Obama initially said during the primary season he would not accept matching funds, but later reversed himself and did? That ought to be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.140.254.10 (talk) 12:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

WELTY;wonth4w i uyu —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.63.107.91 (talk) 15:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Major change in US campaign finance
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/21/campaign.finance.ruling/index.html?hpt=T1

The Supreme Court has given corporations considerably more power in campaign finance. CntRational (talk) 17:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm new to editing Wikipedia, so I'm not going to jump in and start rewriting text right away. But this is gobbledygook:

"Campaign finance in the United States is the financing of Elections in the United States electoral campaigns at the Federal government of the United States Federal, State government state, and Local government in the United States local levels."

And this is inaccurate:

"direct contributions from corporations and labor unions are 'unlimited' as of January 21, 2010 due to a ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission."

First, although it is extremely likely that Citizens United will also apply to unions, it didn't say that and we don't yet have a lower court case saying it. So the reference to unions may be technically premature.

Second, in U.S. federal election law, "direct contributions" is a term used to refer to money given directly to candidate committees, party committees, and other political committees. There is a ban on corporations making direct contributions, and Citizens United did not disturb that ban. What it did was remove the prohibition on corporations making "independent expenditures." An "independent expenditure" is a communication advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate for federal office, made independent of the candidate's campaign. In other words, it's still illegal for Corporation A to give money to Candidate B's campaign. But Corporation A may now pay for an ad that says, "vote for Candidate B."

This sentence has it basically right, although it's screwed up grammatically:

"On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States Supreme Court overruled a 20 year old ruling that had previously prohibited corporations and unions from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign."

It would be more accurate to say that the Court held unconstitutional a federal statute that prohibited corporations and unions from using general treasury funds to make independent expenditures, and in the process overruled a twenty year-old case upholding such restrictions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Matthbva (talk • contribs) 15:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

After adding a link to a PDF for a case related to campaign finance, I noticed that the numerical order of the references was askew. Being only a novice, I would ask someone of greater ability to fix this when he or she has a chance. There is quite a bit here that could stand to be cleaned up though! W. Stephen Lush — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wlush2 (talk • contribs) 21:58, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Campaign Finance Laws, Policy Outcomes, and Political Equality in the American States
This article is largely out of date. is a November, 2013 paper which may be useful for updating. 173.197.107.11 (talk) 17:53, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you're right. However, while that paper may be a good starting point for further research, it may not meet the requirements of WP:RS as a reliable source (for everything it says in it) to which we could attribute information we provide here. That said...feel free to be WP:BOLD and contribute as you see fit!  AdventurousSquirrel (talk) 22:38, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Glossary for all campaign finance related terms
I found an article that compiles lots of U.S. campaign finance related terms. It made me realize that many terms — such as 527s — may be unfamiliar to people, so they might not realize that they have to search for it. I wanted to pass along the piece in case there was an effort to compile all of the campaign finance related pages on Wikipedia. I work at WMF but would love to volunteer to help this effort outside of work, and appreciate feedback on whether or not this is a good idea. Melodykramer (talk) 02:33, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Campaign finance in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130514125415/http://lwvpdx.org/issues-and-advocacy/campaign-finance-reform to http://lwvpdx.org/issues-and-advocacy/campaign-finance-reform

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 17:40, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Impact of finance on the results
I think this article needs a discussion of the impact of money on electoral outcomes. I plan to add a brief section on that. If that issue is discussed in some other Wikipedia article, I trust someone will add a link to such other article{s}. DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:36, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Campaign finance in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110724054827/http://www.ctn.state.ct.us/civics/campaign_finance/Support%20Materials/Campaign%20Finacne%20Timeline.pdf to http://www.ctn.state.ct.us/civics/campaign_finance/Support%20Materials/Campaign%20Finacne%20Timeline.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 20:30, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 7 external links on Campaign finance in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160303221753/http://www.fec.gov/press/press2009/20090309PACcount.shtml to http://www.fec.gov/press/press2009/20090309PACcount.shtml
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120310000223/http://www.fec.gov/data/Leadership.do?format=html to http://www.fec.gov/data/Leadership.do?format=html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080916131859/http://fec.gov/press/press2007/20070910tancredoa.shtml to http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/20070910tancredoa.shtml
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080916131353/http://fec.gov/press/press2007/20071126dodd.shtml to http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/20071126dodd.shtml
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080916132650/http://fec.gov/press/press2007/20071204biden.shtml to http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/20071204biden.shtml
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090102221321/http://www.adn.com/election/story/506632.html to http://www.adn.com/election/story/506632.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141103201657/http://www.idea.int/political-finance/country.cfm?id=231 to http://www.idea.int/political-finance/country.cfm?id=231

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:53, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

A section or at least a list of campaign finance law infractions and those who have served prison time for such events
Short and Sweet. Granted, I am not a wikipedian but a simple search references (and yes, to paraphrase Bill Murray in the film Stipes: Accused but not convicted) the following 'individuals' can 'fit' in such a categorization

John Edwards Dinesh D'Souza Hillary Clinton Anyone Else? AnyOne ?

All for now. (You draw your own conclusions and/or points)?

Update: Missed some big 'fish'(es) in Devin Nunes and AG Steve Marshall


 * I think this depends on the level of documentation and who are claiming violations:
 * If it's one campaign against another, that's standard dirty politics, and I don't think we need that in Wikipedia.
 * If it's a list of actual sanctions following charges in some way investigated by the US Federal Elections Commission, I think those should be listed in that FEC article, e.g., in a section with a title something like "Partial list of official sanctions following FEC investigations", perhaps right before "See also" and after "Commissioners". (The list should not be limited to "persons", I think.)
 * If it's a list of sanctions for violations of state campaign finance laws in the US, then that list may belong in this article, but starting with a summary of any such list in the FEC article with a link to it.
 * Official legal processes against individuals or organizations for violations of campaign finance law might be included with some notice of "status", being either "pending" or "dismissed" or the amount of any fine and / or incarceration.
 * However, nothing should be listed without a "credible source".
 * If you have a list of cases with credible sources for each but you aren't sure of how to make the changes, please post it here or (better?) on Talk:Federal Election Commission. Then invite others to make the changes.
 * I think such a list would be useful. If it gets large enough, it could become it's own article.  However, starting small would be good.  Then as others identify credible sources for other alleged violations, those can be added.  DavidMCEddy (talk) 01:51, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Gauging Interest From Wiki-Community in Collaborating to Revise/Edit/Polish Campaign Finance Article
Hello, I am wishing to gauge any interest among the Wikipedia community here in a collaborative effort to clean up some elements of this article. After reviewing the input on the talk page, there are some very good and helpful recommendations and resources that just need an action plan to implement and apply the edits. However, the topic is lofty and complicated and could benefit from having a coordinated and collaborative plan of approach. Meanwhile, I will pursue some minor edits in the article to assist with clarity and readability, beginning with organizing some definitions and concepts. Thanks and best wishes Aquarius2018 (talk) 17:39, 5 September 2018 (UTC)Aquarius2018


 * I'm not prepared to make a substantive commitment to helping rewrite this article, but I routinely review changes others to articles that are on my watchlist. My responses vary from nothing to "Thanks", to minor additional edits to major edits or reversions with a discussion on the "Talk" page.  The standard Wikipedia advice for things like this is "be bold but not reckless."  Do what you feel you have time and energy to do -- with the article or with discussing specifics on this Talk page.  Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:55, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! Aquarius2018 (talk) 19:57, 12 September 2018 (UTC)Aquarius2018

"aimed at political action"?
Thanks for your recent edits. Most of them seem to me to add clarity.

However, I'm confused by your recent insertion of "aimed at political action" in, "Federal law restricts how much individuals and organizations aimed at political action may contribute to political campaigns, political parties, and other FEC-regulated organizations. Corporations and unions are banned from donating money directly to candidates ("hard money") or national party committees."

I'm reverting this change, because I do not understand it. For me, the sentence made sense without it. This addition confuses me.

If the current verbiage is wrong, please explain how it's wrong and suggest alternative verbiage.

Thanks again for your contributions to Wikipedia and this article in particular. DavidMCEddy (talk) 19:33, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Re:
Hi,@ IRS tax codes for organizations that file with IRS for purposes of political action (501 c- groups, effectively termed PACS) are aimed at organizing for political action. The language is specfic about political action. If an organization is filing to create an affiliated PAC with the singluar goal to engage in political activities associated with raising and expending funds, the purpose is literally "aimed at political action". This above verbiage could be used in place of the phrase this editor orginally employed. This editor's goal was concision, but not confusion. That is why "aimed at political action" was used. If the above verbiage is not satisfactory, we could incorporate the IRS language from the tax code requirments for PACS if you think it would clarify. Thanks.Aquarius2018 (talk) 20:09, 18 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the clarification. I did some wordsmithing on that.  Feel free to revise it further if you think you have a way to improve what I just wrote.  DavidMCEddy (talk) 20:44, 18 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I think your edits work very well to bring the clarification and necessary distinction my words were striving for. Thank you :)Aquarius2018 (talk) 21:16, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

end of the campaign
During a campaign there are restrictions on what funds can be used for, resulting in campaign finance violations. (Does the article mention this?) As I understand it, though, and would like to see in this article, after a campaign, a candidate can use all remaining funds for personal use without any questions. The article also doesn't say this. Gah4 (talk) 02:24, 5 November 2020 (UTC)


 * @Gah4 created ethics section for this. Louis P. Boog (talk) 03:06, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Duplication and conflict re. "WikiProject United States| ..."
On 2020-11-14T06:42:51 AnomieBOT replaced a reference to on this Talk page by one referring to  without checking to see if such a reference already existed. Now this article has two different references to. I don't know enough about "WikiProject" anything to do anything sensible with this, except to try to call attention to this apparent duplication and conflict here and in User talk:AnomieBOT. DavidMCEddy (talk) 08:21, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Recent edits to broaden scope
Have been attempting to broaden scope of the article which appeared to me when I started in late October 2022 to not so much be an article on Campaign finance in the United States in general  (history, danger it poses or doesn't, why people want to regulate it, etc.) as types  of campaign contributions and especially federal laws on campaign contributions. Please forgive my mistakes and shortcomings as I am researching this as I go and have limited internet access. --Louis P. Boog (talk) 21:45, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Money and Politics
— Assignment last updated by Tuk28507 (talk) 18:56, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Global Poverty and Practice
— Assignment last updated by Ctalwalker (talk) 23:25, 25 April 2024 (UTC)