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The Pros And Cons Of Federal Election Reform

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The year was 1974 and President Richard Nixon found himself in the middle of what is best known as the water gate scandal. What exactly happened and how big of a role Nixon played is still up for debate to this day. One thing that had come to light was that accusations began that President Nixon used campaign money to take part in the scandal. Shortly after his resignation from office the Federal Elections Campaign Act was amended by congress so that greater limits were set on campaign spending. What the amendment put into place where two major limits, one being a limit on the amount of money an individual can give for campaigns and the other was a limit on campaign spending. The Federal Election Commission was created to insure that the laws …show more content…

I feel that if private money is expelled from the campaigns it makes for a leveled playing field for candidates. Under most public financing suggestions, raising donations or getting signature is an absolute necessity for a candidate to qualify. To fund campaigns the individuals who take public money cannot take private money. Money that is given to political parties that is not subject to the contribution and spending limits of Federal Elections Campaign Act is considered soft money. Soft money is not subject to the limits because it is not used to specifically support election or beat an opposing candidate. There was a brief period in the 1976 presidential election that soft money was not allowed in the system resulting in some not so good results. As the presidential campaigns used their hard money resources for T.V. ads there was no extra money for traditional campaigns items such as bumper stickers, signs for yards and slate cards. This type of campaigning (grassroots campaigns) has always played an valuable role in connecting voters to the political parties. Therefor in 1979 congress was quick to act specifically approving the use of soft money spending’s and contributions. Voter registration drives, efforts to get people out to vote, and phone banks are also funded by soft

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In the past few years, the United States has seen a huge spike in the money spent in federal elections (See Appendix 4.B). Not only have candidates been making greater efforts to communicate their ideas to the American public, but super PACs have also been displaying their support for candidates and their political policies; they do so by using their right to accept unlimited donations from the public and later, use that money to promote certain candidates, or to sway voters in a desired direction. The immense power that super PACs have to sway voters has come under harsh criticism, spurring the creation of new laws and limits on the super PACs in an attempt to keep them in check and to avoid possible corruption. These limits on super

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586 Words | 3 Pages

To Gerrymander something is to manipulate the boundaries of a district to favor one party or class. The information used to choose how to manipulate districts is by census data which means district lines are usually redrawn every 10 years. Is gerrymandering a fair practice? Political parties that are currently in power would say that it is fair because gerrymandering the district lines that are drawn are reviewed by a judge and then made into districts that way. So that means it follows the proper system to do so.

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In today’s government, there are two groups that can influence the way people vote for candidates in political races. They are known as a Super Pac and 501c4. Super Pacs are committees that became significant in 2010 after the court decision in the SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission (Super Pacs). A 501c4 is referred as “social welfare” groups. Their primary focus is to promote social welfare causes (Sullivan).

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160 Words | 1 Pages

Gerrymandering is when district lines are drawn in such a way to give a party higher chance of getting there representatives in control of the state. Gerrymandering is a way that the government can control who has power and who does not. There is a lot of controversy behind this though some people think that politicians should not be in charge of drawing the districts that a group of un bias people should draw the boundaries. People that want to keep the process we have now that allows for gerrymandering argue that non bias people do not exist and to give the task to someone different would just lead to more gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is not new in fact its named after the first to do it in the united states Elbridge Gerry

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Do you feel insignificant during elections? Do you worry that there is too much money in politics? Do you believe that campaigns are corrupt? All these common worries become real issues in 2010 with Citizens United v. FEC: a Supreme Court ruling that will forever be significant to elections. The Citizens United ruling "opened the door" for unrestricted campaign spending by corporations, but most importantly the case led to the formation of groups called super PACs: corporations or labor unions that have the ability to use its general treasury and unlimited donations to influence elections.

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389 Words | 2 Pages

The Electoral College is not a good system of voting for the United States. There are many flaws with the Electoral College, including, a two party system, a winner-takes-all nature, and the failure to elect who the majority voted for. However, if the U.S. wants to replace the Electoral College there needs to be a viable and fair option to reform it into. Why is the two party system bad? The two party system makes it nearly impossible for third party candidates to even be considered.

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614 Words | 3 Pages

Gerrymandering is a practice that stopped redistricting and goes to establish a political advantage for a specific party or group by manipulating district limits to create biased advantage districts. The process for making a congressional district map in Texas has grown more complex and significant over the years. Districts are usually drawn by politicians that typically have a vested interest in the effect of the new lines; according to laws and regulations they're subject to judicial review. This gives the state the power to control and maintain their districts. The disadvantage is that it allows representatives who could not otherwise get elected, to be elected.

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Gerrymandering is defined as “the dividing of a state, county, etc., into election districts so as to give one political party a majority in many districts while concentrating the voting strength of the other party into as few districts as possible.” Moreover, the number of Congressional districts in a state is based on the state’s population. Every ten years, the districts can be redrawn as the state’s population number changes. Gerrymandering groups the opposing party’s voters into a few large districts and the controlling party’s voters into various small districts.

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Over the last few decades, the United States Congress has debated numerous campaign finance reforms. Debated proposals have included limiting independent expenditures, raising limits on individual contributions, banning all private campaign contributions, and creating a public financing campaign system. In many of the debates, compelling arguments exist for both the proponents and the opponents. Generally, arguments are predicated upon constitutional concepts, Supreme Court rulings, standard policy, logic and reason, and personal perspectives.

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What is “Gerrymandering”? which until now was something that never crossed my mind until I attended my Political Science class. Interestingly, Gerrymandering is a tradition vested for a political advantage by a political party to manipulate the district boundaries. Gerrymandering can also be used to utilize from a race, ethnicity, class groups or religion point of prospect, simply to benefit a political party. “The word “gerrymander” was coined at a Boston dinner party hosted by a prominent Federalist in March 1812, according to an 1892 article by historian John Ward Dean.

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479 Words | 2 Pages

y Americans feel puzzled on whether they approve of the electoral college or change it all together. However, before the argument begins on which method would prove most beneficial to Americans, we must consider all the facts surrounding how the electoral college works. Each state, including the District of Columbia, receives one electorate for each of congressional delegates which includes both the house of representatives and senate. Most states, with the exception of Nebraska and Maine, adopted a winner takes all approach that uses the majority from each state to determine who all the its electors vote for. This becomes an issue when the popular vote, which is determined by looking directly at the number of votes each candidate received by the citizens themselves, and the electoral college do not match.

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1008 Words | 5 Pages

Gerrymandering Gerrymandering is the redrawing of political boundaries, otherwise known as district lines, in a state to give one party a numeric advantage over the opposing party. This is done by dividing districts up into highly irregular sections to achieve the goal of having voters from a particular party highly concentrated in some areas and thinly scattered in other areas (Donnelly, Fortune). Gerrymandering has been criticized because it violates the two basic principles in electoral designation; compactness and equality of size of constituencies in electoral designation (The Editors, Britannica). There is currently no law against the process of Gerrymandering. However, the current Supreme Court case Gill v. Whitford could change that.

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1389 Words | 6 Pages

The Dark Side of Gerrymandering Gerrymandering has been around ever since the forefathers of America first started the nations democratic voting system. Gerrymandering is the redistribution of electoral district lines in order to give the redistributors an unfair political advantage (Elliot). While it is technically a legal practice, it allows the political parties in office to find a way to gain political advantages by separating minorities and voters of opposing political parties. The social inequalities and federal dishonesty associated with gerrymandering must be addressed and regulated as it poses a real problem for Americans as their votes are having less and less of an impact on elections. There are two common types of gerrymandering

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The Electoral College has caused numerous problems in the past and have consequently changed the outcomes of numerous elections including the elections of 1800 (Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Aaron Burr), 1824 (John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and William H. Crawford), 1876 (Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden), 1888, (Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison), and 2000 (George W. Bush and Al Gore). throughout these elections the same catastrophe has occurred; The winner of the popular vote did not receive the presidency due to the Electoral College votes. In addition to the problems, there have been multiple close calls, for the example the elections of 1968 and 1976. While many analysts of American politics have come to

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1120 Words | 5 Pages

Thomas Hastings PSC 1113 Miranda Canody November 21, 2014 Problems with American Democracy: The Electoral College No other institution of government has been at the center of controversy more than the Electoral College. The presidency, and therefore the direction of this country, has been decided by this institution, which was created by the Framers of this country. The history of the Electoral college has been marred by many flaws and mistakes, but these mistakes could be corrected by either heavily changing the College or by abolishing it completely.

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