Reform Arguments For Campaign Finance Reform

Are the rising amounts of monetary contributions donated to campaigns harmful to democracy? Their currently is a widespread belief that this vast amount of money threatens our governments systems ability to act in a fair and equal manner. In the goal to protect democracy, arguments for campaign finance reform have been brought up. Reform arguments rest on one single fear: that, left to themselves, various political actors will transform economic power into political power and thereby violate the democratic norm of equal political empowerment (Ortiz, 1998). Dworkin makes the argument that democracy requires that in addition to everyone having an equal vote their must also be equal opportunity to persuade others to our own views about candidates

Elected officials must balance the wishes of the overall electorate, specific constituencies within the Congress, and their own ideology. The relative importance of those competing factors remains an open question (Levitt, 1996). According to Fenno legislators make their decisions based off of three primary goals: reelection, good public policy, and influence (Smith, et al., 2013). Mayhew argues that Fenno's first goal, reelection, is in fact the only goal. His reasoning is that congressional members are constantly scared or worried with the thought of losing the next election round. There are three activities legislators take part in to help accomplish reelection. These activities are advertising, credit claiming, and position taking (Mayhew,

During majority of the twentieth century political parties dominated campaigns and therefore finances. Parties chose the candidates, provided votes for nomination in primary elections, and managed the full span of campaigns. This party-centered campaigning was not reliant on money, but rather volunteered services or negotiations for a party-controlled favor. This began to change as the economy of gifts and exchanges grew into an economy of money. The media provides a good example of one of the underlying factors to this switch in economy. As this all occurred the burden of fundraising made a switch of its own, moving from the party to the candidates. Furthermore, because it became so candidate-centered, American campaign finance became much more campaign-specific, and , thus, much more expensive (Sorauf, 1994). With elections becoming more expensive, candidates had to be on the constant search for donors. Candidates do spend a great chunk of their own money but they cannot possible rely solely on it. As campaign contributions grew so did activist advocating for